


Fade to Black

by Defiler_Wyrm



Category: Supernatural
Genre: All Subtext Intended, Body Horror, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Folklore, Gen, Horror, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Torture, Monster of the Week, Phobias, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, Sam and Dean Cuss Like Sailors, Season/Series 08, Subtext, Trials of Hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-20 18:21:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4797596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defiler_Wyrm/pseuds/Defiler_Wyrm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lying idle does a hunter no good. With Cas and Kevin in the wind and the First Trial starting to take its toll, Sam and Dean are desperate for something to do, even if it’s a simple salt-and-burn in a backwoods Arkansas town. But since when is anything in their lives simple?</p><p>They ought to know the danger of underestimating the situation, but everyone forgets sometimes.</p><p> <i>Set during the hiatus between 8.16 and 8.17, <b>Fade to Black</b> is a story about thought, memory, and the most basic human fears.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Job 36:20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack Entries  
> [1\. Off Our Asses/Deep South (Opening Overture)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVRxdPWV3RM)

_Desire not the night, when people are cut off in their place._

It’s been five days since they got back from Great Falls. It took two for Dean’s antsiness to start driving Sam up the wall. It took Sam three days, seven hours, and nineteen minutes to come up with a suitable distraction once he set his mind to it, and he’ll be damned if his discovery gets ignored. Being direct about it isn’t going to get him what he wants this time, though, so he’ll have to settle for passive.

“Huh.” Sam tilts his upper body back in the seat but the only sound that answers him is the creak of an antique chair. He clears his throat, but Dean persists in not taking the bait; a quick glance over shows he’s still slouched over three seats down on the other side of the table, sulking or mulling or generally being sullen. It’s not until Sam pitches a tone of casual discovery around “This could be something,” that he bothers looking up and even then it’s to roll his eyes as if shoring himself up for some Herculean effort.

“ _What,_ Sam, _what_ could be something.”

Sam swallows down the urge to take this personally and gestures to his laptop. He also has to resist the urge to pitch his voice over the sound of Dean drumming his fingers against the table. “Missing persons in some little town out in the Ouchitas.” _Ta-ta-ta-tak._ “Seven this year, all concentrated in this one area — three high school kids at once last week.” _Ta-ta-ta-tak._ “Cops swept the place, brought in search dogs, they got zip. Just some old abandoned chapel that’s about to fall over.” _Ta-ta-ta-tak._

“So they got tired of small-town bullcrap and ran off, kids never do that,” Dean sneers. “In Arkansas.”

“Look, Dean,” Sam snaps back, gesturing with both hands like butcher’s knives, “it’s been nearly two weeks since we’ve seen or heard anything from anyone, alright? We’ve still got radio silence from Garth, the Trans, Charlie, Cas” (and he doesn’t miss the way Dean flinches about that one, in the form of making an especially constipated face) “and we haven’t got a goddamn clue to go on with the other half of the demon tablet, or— or demons, or angels, or any other thing out there, but at least I’m looking instead of sitting here feeling sorry for myself, okay?” A beat later he decides that wasn’t quite incisive enough so he tacks on, “I don’t exactly see you making calls,” as he turns back to the laptop.

Dean’s chair scrapes across marble tiles loud enough that he doesn’t have to look to know he’s struck the nerve he was aiming for.

“But this could be something,” Sam goes on with a sigh, “so we may as well do something other than sit on our asses while we wait.”

“Fine, whatever.” Glass clinks; liquid gurgles quietly from a large container to a smaller one. The grouch is pouring himself a finger or three of scotch.

That’s his third helping today. Something constricts in Sam’s chest. He keeps his mouth shut about it as Dean sits back down, this time across from him.

“So’s this all we have to go on, bunch of missing teens in the boonies?”

Sam shakes his head. “No, there’s more. Police picked up this local kid, ahh, Brian Greene, and held him for questioning ‘cause he was the last one seen with the other three. He claims he an’ his friends went to scope out that chapel I was telling you about, and all the lights went out, there were some, uh, a bunch of weird noises, and the others just...vanished into thin air one by one.”

“Huh.” Dean makes a moue, then a considering nod. “Could be something.”

There. Finally. That took more effort than anticipated but he’ll take it. Sam spreads his hands and raises his eyebrows before turning back to the computer again. “It’s a….” Click, click-click, tap-tap. “Little under nine-hour drive from here to Louisburg. So like six or seven the way you drive.”

That earns a groan. “That’s a lotta gas for what’s probably just a fuckin’ poltergeist,” Dean grouses, but Sam levels a Look at him that has him groaning all over again. “Okay, alright, we’ll check it out. Find out what you can about the place and we’ll head out in like half an hour. I’m gonna make a damn sandwich, you want anything?”

“Yeah.” Sam opens a new tab, shifting fully into research mode. “Whatever you’re having.”

—

For some reason Dean seems to dislike the Deep South. At one point Sam thought maybe it was because of the girl who broke his heart twice over in Missouri, but it’s more than that. There’s something about being in Dixie that sets Dean on edge and sharpens his tongue, as if some sour spirit infects him the moment the Great Plains give way to Ozark highlands. His knuckles whiten on the steering wheel the first time they pass a pickup with a Confederate flag sticker, weather-pale and peeling, plastered across its rust-pocked bumper. If Sam didn’t know any better he’d say they’re still just as tight two hours later on the other side of Broken Arrow.

It’s strange, all things considered. They’re not too far removed from all that as poor Midwestern boys themselves, raised on back roads and in small towns coast to coast in a culture of violence and isolationism, and Dean isn’t exactly a shining beacon of progressivism. The man is crass, domineering, practically in a romantic relationship with his guns and muscle car, and performs traditional masculinity like his life depends on it: if Amelia had mistaken Sam for the Good Ole Boy she’d’ve surely been convinced Dean was your typical gun-toting redneck lowlife.

Yet up until the point they walk into a hunt’s first bar or motel or diner he comes off as just as ill-at-ease in the South as he is in a big city, if not more so, and Sam’s the one stuck with the guy for the seven and a half hours it takes to get to Louisburg (there was construction in Tulsa else Dean swears it’d be less). Once they’re in public again the old chameleon blood will take hold and he’ll slip on a mask instinctively tailored to the time and place. No bones about it, Sam grew up a hunter and thus a chameleon too, but Dean’s so much better at becoming what others expect him to be.

His mind drifts back to shapeshifters, to sewer-stink and chains. The monster wearing his brother’s face had been more open than either of them dared, and said things neither of them could have said aloud if it was really him. They’ve lived in each other’s pockets almost all their lives but Sam still wonders how well he really knows Dean. He knows by now, at least, that one of those masks Dean wears is just for him.

“One more time, make sure we’re not missing anything.” Dean’s voice cuts through Sam’s mulling. Mask or no mask, that particular gruffness is a veneer laid over _Please distract me, I need to think about something else._ “Founded a long-ass time ago, died out in the Dust Bowl, land got cut up and sold off cheap to bring people back in around the Fifties and Sixties, blah blah blah, nothing interesting ever happens there until people start disappearing, and when they don’t get found they just drop the investigation and go on like nothing happened. Am I on track so far?”  
  
Sam’s been staring south at the glittering reflections of sunlight off Lake Dardanelle, which is really just a wide bit of the Arkansas River, but it means they must be getting close. It dazzles his eyes and he has to look away. “Um. Yeah. I saved every wiki and news article I could find on the place and its history but there wasn’t a lot I could find in half an hour.” He casts a brief glare at Dean, who studiously ignores it. “There’s...hnh, there’s just the usual rural shit, weird noises at night, random claims that parts of the old town are haunted but nothing really, y’know, corroborating each other.”

“‘Corroborating,’” Dean snorts, smirking. “You gettin’ paid by the letter for this?”

“I wish,” Sam mutters back. He’d talk all day if that were the case. Too bad they’re professionals at not getting paid for squat. The realisation that Dean’s completely derailed his train of thought makes his nose wrinkle. Jerk. “Um. That’s really all we got till we get there. This place isn’t real big on keeping recorded history online, I mean...this is getting into ‘oral tradition’ territory.”

Dean chirps out something crude about oral traditions that Sam pretends he didn’t hear because Jesus Christ, seriously. Even if it is just a ghost or something this is gonna be a long hunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UP NEXT: Chapter 2 arrives 16 September 2015.


	2. Samuel 11:9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We’re here to look over evidence, not your sanity,” Sam assures him, and looks down at his hands to bolster the semblance of sympathetic concern. A vee of pearly scar tissue draws his eye in the too-bright lights. Well. It’s not _all_ an act, after all.
> 
> “It’s surprisingly normal to be confused after a traumatic experience. Sometimes the lines between what’s real and what’s not get blurry. Just tell us what you think happened, and we’ll go from there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack Entries  
> [3\. Officers Davies & Avory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh7A_s0wg2c)  
> [4\. A Son](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFVufWdP4YI)

_And they said unto the messengers that came, Thus shall ye say unto the men of Jabeshgilead, To morrow, by that time the sun be hot, ye shall have help. And the messengers came and shewed it to the men of Jabesh; and they were glad._

 

Louisburg is a town reborn, but from the looks of things it never bothered going much further than birth in either leg of its life. A sprawling smatter of trailers and ranch houses with yards full of livestock give way to a tighter cluster of homes. Decaying relics of the Reconstruction Era that survived the Dust Bowl sag between their more modern counterparts, so many squat, modest brick-faced things whose halcyon days of home and shine passed on fifty years ago. There are nearly as many churches as storefronts, a gas station on one end of town and a post office on the other, a single restaurant right in the middle: small-town America at its smallest.

Too small, in fact, for a motel. As soon as Dean eases up on the gas to let the Impala prowl down the barely-paved thoroughfare they’re both craning their heads for sign of a bed-and-breakfast. The make it to the other side of town without finding one, but they do gather and eventually lose a trail of kids on bikes ogling the sleek old car.

“So much for keeping a low profile,” Sam grumbles, but it doesn’t dim his brother’s million-watt smile. A sharp rap of Dean’s hand against the dash makes him look up.

“Alright, Sammy, decision time.” Dean makes a U-turn for a second pass through town. “Down to the wire here: civvies, state, or Feds?”

Sam responds automatically: “Feds. Keeps people out from underfoot.” He glances at Dean again, catches the look on his big brother’s face, and pushes his luck. “What? Don’t even try to tell me you’re tired of suits.”

For just a moment Dean’s eyes are dagger-sharp before he rolls them up towards the car roof. Point to Sam. “In case you haven’t noticed we’re in a podunk town in BFE County in the Deep South.”

Sam’s eyebrows and shoulders both crawl upward as he shakes his head a little. “Kinda hard not to.”

Dean cuts another look his way. “There are three things people don’t trust for shit in the Deep South, Sam: science, minorities, and the Fed’ral Guv’ment.” This earns him a nod of understanding, finally, and they’re back to peering about for any sign of lodgings. “We could do the reporter thing—”

“They won’t buy it.”

“Yeah, prob’ly not, town this small. Probably wouldn’t get us unattended access to the scene either.”

Sam snorts, unable to quite restrain the mirthful quirk of his mouth. “Like that’s ever stopped us before.”

His brother casts a hand up and lets it smack back down noisily against the steering wheel. “Well I’m sorry for not wanting pesky little shit like getting shot at getting in the way of the job, Sam.”

“Be more snide, Dean, I’m not really getting a clear impression of your contempt.”

Pointing out the faded B&B sign they’d missed on their first pass through Louisburg is the only thing that saves him from reprisal. He knows damned well it’s only delaying the inevitable. As the Impala swings left off the main road he adds, “State Troopers?”

“That’s highway shit. State police?”

Sam looks down at himself: blue-green plaid, canvas jacket, deep indigo jeans. Across at Dean: T-shirt and button-down, jacket discarded to the back seat for the heat, suspicious dark stains on his boots near the sole if one really looks. Out at the hood of their gleaming, pitch-black, non-government-plate-bearing car. Suddenly he recalls that before the Apocalypse part of his faith in God stemmed from the reasoning that it had to be divine providence that so many people bought their bullshit.

In a fit of perceptiveness, Dean catches the dubious contemplation on his little brother’s face, cracks a smirk, and slaps his shoulder with the back of one hand. “Plainclothes, Sammy, we’ll be okay.”

That flippant confidence is like a battering ram. Or maybe it’s a hook, and Sam takes the bait every damned time. He ends up yielding to his brother’s plan with a shrug and a sigh before schooling his expression into the proper mask.

“Attaboy,” Dean crows. “Grab, uh, Davies and Avory, their cards are still good.”

Barnett’s Bed & Breakfast looks like its two storeys probably has the same square footage as many of the little single-floor houses in town. Even the wraparound porch and tall gables aren’t enough to make it look like anything but a miniature of something grander. It’s as weathered as any of them, too, though the owner or owners (Barnett, assumably) have made a game attempt to keep it up over the years. The net result is layer upon layer of muted paint peeling at the edges, old brick filled in with new mortar at the cracks. The porch creaks under their feet, but not enough to cause alarm. Sam does have to duck a bit to get through the front door, though.

The building’s state is reflected in the face of the woman who greets them in the foyer, and Sam catalogues the details of her just as quickly. Middle-aged, mousy hair greying at the temples, fit in a way that speaks to fighting the inevitable changes brought on by age. Strong makeup vying with crow’s feet. Modest clothing, chunky but not-quite-ostentatious jewelry, old wedding bands. She introduces herself as Sue Barnett.

Dean’s paying as much attention to their surroundings as he does any of the myriad motels they’ve stayed in throughout their lives: seemingly none, but Sam suspects he notices more than he lets on, even if it’s just tallying exit points.

The moment the words, “My partner and I need a place to put up for a few nights,” leave Dean’s mouth, something in her goes tense and cold. Oh. Great.

Sam has to grit his teeth and count backwards from five to restrain himself from facepalming over his brother’s unfortunate wording, and then wonders why exactly he stopped himself. If he still had any faith in higher powers he’d be praying right now: _Please, God, don’t let my stupid brother’s fat mouth get us run out of town by rednecks thinking we’re gay._

“We’re not sure how long the investigation will keep us in town so let’s call it a week for now and play it by ear,” he cuts in before Dean can make the situation any worse, “if that’s alright with you.”

Surprise replaces suspicion in Mrs Barnett’s face in the span of a heartbeat. She lifts a hand to rest it over her heart. “Investigation? Are you boys with the authorities? I thought after they brought the dogs in and couldn’t find nothing they’d just given up…. Of course, of course, you bring your things in and I’ll make sure your rooms are ready.”

Dean glances at Sam as he pulls out the fictional Officer Davies’ credit card to handle the bill. “Thanks. And uh, Mrs Barnett, one more thing….”

On his way back out the door Sam overhears Dean spinning some pretty tale about wanting to keep a low profile and not letting anyone else into their rooms. Sam snorts to himself. Like that’s going to stop the whole damn town from knowing they’re there by lunch tomorrow. It might be a boon, really; if the rest of Louisburg reacts like Sue Barnett did they’ll have loose tongues. It can’t be easy to think those with the power to find your loved ones might have just shrugged, said “Oh well, we tried,” and walked away.

 _Mrs Tran could probably relate after this last year,_ a particularly self-loathing part of his brain points out. He closes the Impala’s trunk with a little more force than is strictly necessary.

—

Their quarters are just as cramped as would be expected from looking at the place. They’re both probably going to be sleeping with their feet hanging off the ends of the beds. There’s an element of familiarity to the inconvenience.

The Winchesters’ lifestyle has instilled them with great efficiency in packing and unpacking, when they even bother with taking anything but toiletries out of their duffels. On the first day of a hunt they usually don’t. They’ll “move in” more fully if the job lasts long enough — if it stretches past a week as opposed to a handful of days. He’s willing to bet Dean hasn’t taken anything out.

(That’s why, of course, Sam’s dorm room at Stanford was practically barren until his second semester. Nothing ever feels like it’s going to last, because in their lives nothing ever does.)

A knock at the door, followed immediately by his brother barging in, breaks his line of thought before he can get angsty about it.

“I got the Greene kid’s address,” Dean announces without preamble. “Figured we should get cracking on that. He’s out on the northeast side of town. Which is practically walking-distance.”

Sam gives him a flat look and turns up his palms. “It’s a town of four hundred, Dean, everything’s walking distance.” He checks the safety on his Taurus, slips it into the back of his waistband under his jacket, and follows Dean back down the stairs.

Just because Brian Greene _technically_ lives within walking distance doesn’t mean either of them actually wants to hoof it. They park the Impala in front of a squat trailer home whose walkway looks to be made of cinder blocks sunk into the ground. The grass is patchy in places, overgrown in others; a mud-streaked motorbike rests against a wooden deck that’s probably the newest thing on the entire block. No sooner do they shut the doors than a black-and-merle hound comes charging out at them, barking, hackles up. It sends Dean scrambling to put Sam between himself and the dog. On pure instinct Sam stretches an arm out halfway to shield his brother, but drops it with a huff once he realises there’s no need: the dog’s lead ends well out of range.

The racket summons a young man whose shirt hangs off him like a tarp. The boy casts a narrowed glance at the Winchesters before chiding the dog: “Dozer you shut up, go lay down! Go on now!”

Sam turns his head just enough to catch his brother swallowing hard before stepping forward level with him.

“Brian Greene?” Dean ventures. His eyes track the hound’s reluctant retreat back under the deck.

The young man comes out onto the landing, shoulders set, brow furrowed in irritation and suspicion. “Who’s askin’?”

In unison, the hunters produce their (very fake, _highly_ illegal) badges, and Dean introduces them as “Officers Davies and Avory, Arkansas state police. We’re investigating a string of missing persons in the area, your friends included. We’d like to ask you a few questions if that’s alright with you.”

“Look, I already told the cops everything I know when they tried to lock me up for it,” Brian scowls. His hound rises back up to her feet but otherwise stays put; Dean eyes her again all the same. “And if you’re cops where’s your squad car an’ uniforms?”

Sam’s well aware that his smile doesn’t come remotely close to his eyes. “Plainclothes officers get to leave the monkeysuits and Crown Vics behind,” he recites. “We’re specialists. And we know you’re not a suspect; we’re hoping you might know something that’ll help us find your friends. It’s just a few questions.”

Worry softens the boy’s face. Brian sucks his lips, hesitating. “C’mon in. I wasn’t kiddin’ when I said I already told ‘em everything I know, though, and they just think I’m crazy or makin’ shi— uh, stuff up. Dozer stay. Stay put,” he tells the dog as he turns back to the door.

The hound follows orders, but Sam’s not surprised when Dean takes the stairs two at a time to get out of reach as soon as possible anyway. A memory rises unbidden: he’d been about five and refusing to climb a staircase without risers out of fear that his feet would get caught and he’d fall. After failing to coax him up, Dean had carried him instead, and sure enough caught the toe of a shoe on the last step and they both faceplanted on the landing. He snorts in amusement to himself, and shakes his head dismissively when Dean glances back as if to ask what’s so funny.

\--

It’s bright inside. Every light is on in the living room (cramped, mildly smelly in the way kids’ living spaces get when left to their own devices). The hundred-watt floor lamps adding to the brightness look newer than anything else around them. There are lights on in either direction, light streaming under every door. Even what must be a hall closet. A little odd for mid-afternoon. Neither of them does anything so obvious as elbowing each other but they do share a glance that makes it clear they’ve both noticed. Dean, at least, has their opening run-in with Dozer to explain away the wary stiffness in his movements; but Sam just has to pretend nothing’s amiss while his instincts scream to the contrary.

Closer up, it’s more apparent that the kid isn’t practically swimming in that shirt due to being too thin, but rather the garment simply being several sizes too large, like a hand-me-down from someone a lot larger. It’s not a flattering look. Neither are the sleepless circles under his eyes too dark for someone his age. Despite a build as robust as his tan there’s a hollowness in his expression that Sam knows all too well.

“Your parents at work?” Dean ventures lightly.

“You didn’t read my ‘case file’?” the boy sneers back.

“Didn’t do the local brass much good, figured we might as well start from scratch. Get fresh eyes on the whole thing.” Dean sinks his hands into his pockets and shifts his weight back, propping a heel up on the floor. He meets Brian’s accusing gaze with the sort of confidence that stands on its own without posing a challenge. This is his art, these easy lies that slip off his tongue like aged whiskey and smoke; truth is clay that he shapes to fit his whim with words and well-placed smiles.

Brian hesitates a moment as that sinks in.

“Whatever. I’m emancipated. They didn’t even come see me in lockup. It’s just me here.” As if to make a point about being king over his own untidy little domain, he drops down into a probably-third-hand recliner; the hunters take this as their cue to occupy a couch that looks like it’s been a few rounds with a family of raccoons. Their boots nudge up against stacks and stacks of light bulbs, still in their bulk wrapping, under the coffee table.

The brothers share a look that speaks volumes for both their shared understanding of absentee parents and their mounting unease. Between them Dean remains the optimist where the former is concerned: “Did they maybe just not find out?”

Sam has to hand it to the boy: the look he levels at Dean in pointed silence before responding shows much greater eloquence than Sam would have expected of an underaged yokel. It’s an impressive amount of sass.

“You really did start from scratch, didn’t you,” Brian deadpans (and Sam has to clamp his teeth and lips shut to maintain his composure). “Someone gettin’ brought in for questioning about missing persons is the kinda news that’ll spread faster’n you can walk across Louisburg. Guarantee you they knew. And I’m okay with them not showing up. No matter what you hear in town I’ve made my peace with my Dad now I’m on my own.”

He grumbles something under his breath, scratches the back of his head, and finally sighs up at the ceiling: “Anyway if we start from scratch you’re gonna think I’m crazy too.”

If only they had a dollar for every time they’ve heard that. “We’re here to look over evidence, not your sanity,” Sam assures him, and looks down at his hands to bolster the semblance of sympathetic concern. A vee of pearly scar tissue draws his eye in the too-bright lights. Well. It’s not _all_ an act, after all. “It’s surprisingly normal to be confused after a traumatic experience. Sometimes the lines between what’s real and what’s not get blurry. Just tell us what you think happened, and we’ll go from there.”

In the corner of his vision Dean is watching him a little too closely. Sam keeps his eyes on their witness. Focus.

The young man’s lips purse. One hand splays out stiff and rattles on the axis of his wrist to tap his thumb against the knuckles of the hand still curled in a fist. “I, I don’t even know what happened. It’s weird as shit and some parts are kinda hard to remember. Me and my friends were hangin’ out one night: me, Jenny Rutherford, Leron Waters, and Russ Cooper. We was kinda bored ‘cause it’s a dry county—” He stumbles over his words at the way Dean’s eyebrows arch and chin tips up, but finally just shrugs. “So there wasn’t no alcohol involved. Somewhere along the way we hatched up a plan to sneak out to the old chapel on the south end, y’know, Old Town.”

Dean squints, cocks his head to one side, bird-quick. “And do what exactly?”

“Nothing bad,” Brian insists. He’s on the defensive again. This part of the job is a balancing act: keeping up their front without putting the mark— the witness so on edge they become uncooperative.

“You didn’t, um, bring anything with you…?” Sam’s fishing is probably obvious. It doesn’t need to not be. He’s offering the kid an out, and he takes it.

“I told you, no booze, no drugs, no devil-worship, honest we was just gonna poke around and maybe scare Russ a bit. Just flashlights. Bad enough we wasn’t supposed to be out that late anyway. The others weren’t anyway, they got curfew.” For just an instant his eyes go wild and his breath speeds up. “Had a curfew.”

“Have,” Dean corrects firmly. “Don’t give up on them yet. We’re gonna do everything we can to find your friends. Alright? Just take a moment, take a deep breath. The more you can tell us the sooner we can find ‘em.”

It takes Brian a moment to collect himself. For the Winchesters, this is rote, waiting for the words to come. When he speaks again his voice has shed its defensive steel and suspicious thorns. What’s left behind is something raw and quivering like the meat of an open wound.

“The chapel’s from the old days, back before the town died. There’s some stories about it being haunted or something, y’know, dogs going missing, people going missing, Black Masses, dumb shi— dumb stuff like that. No one really believes ‘em. We went in t’see if there really is a graveyard in there.”

 _Inside the chapel,_ Sam wonders, _a crypt?_ His brow furrows; from what he knows of this part of the South that would be pretty far out of the ordinary. Usually they find cemeteries on the surrounding grounds.

Brian swallows hard. “There is. Right in the middle, walled in.” (Ah. Not what he thought, but still unusual.) “We got in there an’ Russ was like, man we gotta go, let’s just go, man, like real scared. It got real cold, real cold, so we, we uh.

“...I swear to God the door wasn’t in the same place as when we found the graveyard. It was darker in the chapel, like, pitch black, and…. There was walls. Like we was in a whole ‘nother building, and we thought, y’know, maybe we just got turned around an’ wound up in the rectory. It’s...I mean. Leron’s flashlight went out while we was lookin’ for the door, and we started hearing these...noises...like, like animals, scratching. Breathing heavy. I thought it was just Russ, but.” He shakes his head. His sharp gesticulation can’t hide the fact that his hands are trembling, and Sam has to wonder if the sweat beading up on the kid’s brow is from the heat from all these lights (since that’s sure as Hell what has him sweating) or from stress.

Sam and Dean exchange another look across the quiet before Brian finds his tongue again. Neither of them dares speak just yet.

“Next thing we know, we was still going through this place trying to find our way out, and Russ was like ‘It’s not funny anymore’ and we looked back and Leron’s just, just gone, and we started freaking out calling for ‘im and Russ’ flashlight went out, so he started freaking out harder.

“We. We found a door. The ground was all wet like…. And Jenny’s light went out too, and there was... _screaming_ , and... _crunching_ , and I swear to God I ran like I ain’t ever ran, I tried to grab her hand but my flashlight started flickering and...I can’t, I can’t remember what— Jesus, there was a door, all wet, and I...I think I busted it up ‘cause next thing I know I was outside, and it was daybreak.”

Brian pauses to huff out a breath, shaking his head again, as if even he can’t believe what he’s saying. The distant focus of his eyes juttering to and fro tells Sam volumes, though. “I mean. It’s impossible, ‘cause we went in there ‘round one.” He lifts his head to fix that desperate look on one “officer” and then the other. “But I’m tellin’ you it was sunrise when I came crashing outta that door. It was like God Himself brought the sun up to get me outta the dark.”

Sam flicks a glance down at the boxes of light bulbs, then to the three extraneous lamps in the room, and it clicks into place.

The boy runs a quaking hand hand through his hair and lets out a hysterical little laugh. “And my, my fuckin’ flashlight was just as bright as day soon’s I got outta here, God I don’t know how. I hollered myself hoarse for ‘em ‘cause like Hell was I going back in there, but there wasn’t a goddang sound. Not a fuckin’ cricket. So I. I ran. I kept on runnin’ back to town. And when I got there the sheriff thought I was high and the sumbitch put me in the drunk tank instead’a looking for ‘em. Said they was playing a prank.”

“That was no prank,” Sam murmurs.

Brian shakes his head. Another swipe of his hand smears the wet track on his cheek. “No. They brought out a search and rescue team from Little Rock with dogs and all, and they looked for three days and didn’t find nothing and they just...left.” He huffs out the ghost of a laugh. “‘Course they didn’t find nothing. They was only looking during the day.”

Moments of shell-shocked silence tick by.

Finally Sam’s the one to break it once he can’t stand the sound of his own rushing heartbeat anymore. “You think they would’ve found your friends if they’d looked after dark?”

The boy stares him down. “You a believer, Officer Avory?” The question takes Sam aback — how does he even begin to answer that now? — but Brian takes the fact that the words catch in his throat as a response. “I hope so, ‘cause you can call me crazy all you want, but I don’t think we was alone in there, and I _know_ it’s only by the grace of God I got out.”

Sam’s grateful that Dean managed to keep his mouth shut this time as the young man looks away.

“I just wish I knew why He didn’t get them out too.”

This time Dean does respond: “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under Heaven.”

It’s a wonder Sam doesn’t get whiplash. Sometimes his brother….

“Ecclesiastes?”

“The Byrds.”

...Still finds ways to take him completely off guard. “Asshole,” Sam mutters under his breath.

Brian is just as unimpressed. “Officer are you sayin’ there’s a reason my friends got taken?”

“Taken?” Sam repeats, sitting up.

“Now I’m not saying it’s part of ‘God’s plan,’” Dean barrels on (and Sam knows him well enough to catch the scorn in his voice there), “but from what you’ve described it does seem _premeditated_.”

“Premeditated.” Brian says the word slowly like he’s tasting it, and levels the hunter with a survivor’s harrowed stare. “I guess. If you walk into a lion’s mouth all it’s gotta do is shut its teeth.”

Sam shares another look with Dean. A lion would be infinitely simpler.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains an Easter egg.


	3. Psalms 88:18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If they were really in for it the whole table would’ve come over, not just an ambassador. The hunters meet each other’s gaze for just an instant. That’s all it takes for Dean to give the slightest shake of his head, and for Sam to respond by relaxing an increment.
> 
> This isn’t the first time that Dean’s had the half-hysterical thought of holding a tiger by a chain and he’s dead certain it won’t be the last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack Entries  
> [5\. A Father](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ75cgWEYl8)  
> [6\. Hoarder with a Yard Sign/1934](https://youtu.be/IJZ6QhDA9Ww)

_Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness._

 

The dog — Dozer — is no more pleasant to pass by the second time around. If his brother’s ridiculous stride seems to lengthen even further, well, Dean will take that for what it is, but he doesn’t manage to unclench his jaw till he’s behind the wheel again.

“So whaddaya think: poltergeist?” Sam asks as they shut the Impala’s doors.

“Fits the setting,” Dean allows. Good. Right back to it. He’ll take that for what it is, too. “Making people disappear is pretty high-level stuff though. I’d have to be one mother of a poltergeist.”

“Daeva?”

Please no. This was supposed to be simple. “Oh man I fuckin’ hope not. Night hag?”

Now it’s Sam’s turn to make a face, but his is a dubious one instead. He pitches his voice just enough to carry over the sound of the engine turning over. “Aren’t those just witches?”

“ _Old_ witches. Don’t rule it out yet,” Dean huffs out one side of his mouth, rolling a shoulder. “We’re just getting started and those fuckin’ harpies can do all _sorts_ of freaky shit.”

Sam hums. “Yeah. But I mean. Witches don’t make the temperature drop like spirits do—”

“Unless they’re using a spell that does that,” Dean cuts in.

“—And they’re territorial but they don’t have the kind of threshold-crossing issue the kid was describing.”

Nothing can ever be cut-and-dry, can it.

The both of them grasp for straws in silence while the Impala prowls down the leaf-littered street. But what if— Dean cocks his head, brows rising. “Unless it’s not a territory thing, but a stuck there thing.”

Sam’s expression matches his own. “Like it’s bound to the church.” When Dean glances over Sam’s eyes are flickering as if reading something; he doesn’t look back. Too busy with spinning gears, apparently. “The question is, did someone bind it there, or did they just ward the place so it can’t get out?”

“Or it _could_ be just a territorial thing and it didn’t feel like leaving the house to chase the kid,” Dean says wryly, relishing the annoyed snort it prompts from Sam. He’s just waiting for a snappish “well which is it” but alas, it never comes. Sullen silence isn’t nearly as fun — mostly because it’s contagious, and when left in silence the mind tends to turn to a whole plethora of shit Dean just doesn’t want to think about right now. Kevin, the tablets, the trials, Cas — Cas, who still isn’t answering. Purgatory. Hell. No thanks.

He passes right by the B&B, ignores Sam’s questioning look, and heads for the little diner he’d seen on the way instead. Dean wets his bottom lip and says, “Here’s what I’m thinking. If it’s trapped, we’ve got it where we want it. If it’s not, we lure it out. Either way we’ve got the advantage over it.”

Sam gets a look on his face like he just stepped in something vile. “Whatever _it_ is,” he points out as if Dean were suggesting they just charge in half-cocked.

“Whatever it is,” Dean agrees, and slaps Sam’s back on their way into the diner. “We’ll figure it out. Got a few more people to talk to first.”

—

Sometimes the universe just seems to hand him a setup. Just as they walk in a waitress (long legs, sunkissed skin, brown hair piled high in a messy ponytail, eyes a lighter blue than Dean prefers but he’s not that picky) passes by on her way to another table. Dean catches her eying the both of them appreciably, and she blushes when he winks at her. He could find time for an “interview” before they skip town—

Sam’s knuckles bashing into his arm breaks whatever train of thought he was about to pursue there. Rude.

“Case first, chase tail later,” Sam chides.

Dean draws his head back and tilts it at his little brother in what’s honestly an exaggeration of how affronted he is. “Oh you are extra stick-in-the-mud today, huh.”

He gets a stone-cold glower for that. “Those kids are probably dead, Dean.”

That shuts him up pretty quick. For all the assurances they gave Brian Greene about finding his friends, they both knew better than to say anything about bringing them back alive.

Surprisingly, the diner isn’t what he’d call a dive. He’d been expecting one of those run-down, hole-in-the-wall places covered in dusty metal-stamp signage and filled with leather-skinned Good Ole Boys with belt buckles big enough to eat from. If anything it’s something closer to a small, live-in, redneck version of Biggerson’s. It’s all warm colours and random kitsch on the walls that speaks of Louisburg’s spirit and industry, such as they are. He’s not really sure but it must have a lot to do with lumber and chickens. The building itself must be a converted house.

They don’t talk much over the course of the meal, which isn’t world-class by any means but not at all bad either. The locals are trying not to make a show of watching the two of them; when he catches one looking, instead of being furtive the man actually nods in acknowledgment before going back to his plate. He turns back to find Sam brainstorming on a napkin, the great overgrown nerd.

Around the time that Sam’s picking at the last of his fries and Dean’s just about to set his fork into a slice of strawberry pie, a small group of locals at a table near the counter nod to each other, and one of them breaks off to approach the Winchesters. Dean swallows the dread trying to claw its way up his throat and tips his fork upright between a thumb and middle finger. _Tap-tap_ : two impatient-sounding raps of the fork’s butt on the tabletop signal a potential issue to Sam, who’s much too good at not visibly reacting to these things. Of course, Dean has the advantages of knowing the guy and being able to see his face, unlike the approaching man, so he knows what it means when Sam rolls and stretches broad, thick-muscled shoulders, when his jaw tightens, when his eyes go cold and sharp as flint.

If they were really in for it the whole table would’ve come over, not just an ambassador. The hunters meet each other’s gaze for just an instant. That’s all it takes for Dean to give the slightest shake of his head, and for Sam to respond by relaxing an increment. This isn’t the first time that Dean’s had the half-hysterical thought of holding a tiger by a chain and he’s dead certain it won’t be the last.

The man who saunters over to their table looks like he’s in his fifties but it’s probably more like late thirties, aged hard. He’s otherwise unremarkable save he’s only missing one tooth that Dean can see when he speaks (lower right incisor; a horse or a left hook?) and a combination of moustache and thick brows that reminds him of that one guy in the movie alongside the dude who played the Joker.

“You fellas with the State?” The Arkansas drawl is thick enough to make Dean’s skin crawl.

Sam, still facing away, rolls his eyes as petulantly as humanly possible, and fixes Dean with a look like it’s all his fault. Yeah. They should have known that low-key just wasn’t going to happen.

“Word travels fast,” Dean answers, eying the local while skewering a strawberry on his fork.

“Doesn’t have far to travel,” the man nods back. “I’m Steve Rutherford — Jenny’s my daughter.”

All at once the tigrish tension washes out of Sam, and Dean catches the transformation in his peripheral vision. For just a moment the big guy’s sympathetic heart shows through, but just as quickly he slips back into the role of Agent— no wait, Officer Avory, cool-faced and patient as Elwood Blues. Dean refuses to think of big cats or missing souls.

“I gotta admit I’m surprised to see the State back here after the search parties left. Is it true you’re gonna find Jenny?” Rutherford is doing a remarkable job of keeping his voice steady, considering how close his eyes say he is to falling apart.

“We’re sure gonna try,” Sam rumbles. He squeegees his hands with a napkin before extending one for Rutherford to shake. “Officer Avory. My partner here’s Officer Davies. I’m sorry we’re not meeting under better circumstances.”

“Me too. Listen if there’s anything, anything I can do to help….”

Dean inclines his head. “Actually Mister Rutherford—”

“Steve’s fine,” the man says with a fleeting smile.

“Steve,” Dean nods. “My partner and I were about to head outta here in a few minutes if you’re free to talk.” While Steve nods agreement, Dean trades another look with Sam: a silent expression held in the tiniest of gestures and expressions to coordinate their next move. Tiger on a chain or no, their synchronisation is a warmth in his chest that he only really notices when its absence leaves him cold. He’s dimly aware of a sense of rightness and relief like a nicotine hit softening the jagged edges of the stress that’s been escalating ever since his first glimpse of a goddamn Confederate flag along the road. It makes it easier to think.

That’s not to say he’s comfortable. Grief doesn’t make humans any less dangerous. He makes it through about two bites of pie before pushing it away and flagging their waitress over for a take-out box and the bill. If he were honest with himself, God forbid, he’d admit the hey-good-lookin’ grin he gives her is just to see colour rise in her cheeks again is anemic by Dean Winchester standards. That motor’s been running on its lowest gear for a while now.

He’ll be damned (again) if he acknowledges the way something like worry pinches his little brother’s face, though. They have more important concerns on their hands than indulging Sam’s “make a fuss over every little thing Dean does” habit.

When they get up to leave, Steve’s whole goddamn table stands up to follow. So much for that sense of relief. His fingers itch to close around the cold metal security of a pistol — or something else he hadn’t realised he’s been craving.

One of Rutherford’s buddies (long legs, dark tan, neatly-cut but dusty blond hair, eyes a colder blue than he—) produces a pack of Reds and offers them to the “officers” as soon as they’re all outside. Sam, of course, turns it down with barely-contained derision. Dean gratefully accepts both that and a light, and pulls hard on the first drag, even if he has to choke back a cough. He puts his chin up in defiance of both the rednecks’ amusement over his reaction to such a harsh smoke and his brother’s scathing disapproval for the fact that he’s smoking at all (again).

Sam can just keep his trap shut. It makes it easier to think.

“State Police lets you ride around in that ol’ muscle car on official business?” another of the little group drawls. He’s eying the Winchesters like he’s either unimpressed or unconvinced — the squint is hard to read. One is a mild irritation, but the other could be a problem.

Dean flashes a smile he doesn’t feel. “You get as good as we are, they let you do all kinds’a things,” he recites. “Using a personal car’s just one of the perks.”

“So you’re specialists,” a third man nods, and Dean has to fight not to smirk at the deja vu. But when the guy continues on with, “Y’all look familiar too,” Dean’s stomach does this neat parlour trick where it feels like he’s just swallowed a brick of ice-cold lead.

He defaults to an even wider grin and a frantically-deep drag off his cigarette. It takes everything he has to not cast a nervous glance at Sam, to play it cool; but by god, he’s Dean Winchester, and playing it cool is what he does. Redirect and keep it upbeat. Positive. Give them the gains instead of what they stand to lose. Yeah. He’s nowhere close to panicking. Honest.

“Yeah we get that a lot. Listen, no offense fellas, but time is a factor here. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and the quicker we do it the better our chances of finding these kids.” The sick roil of his stomach settles a degree when the locals nod and buzz agreement. They’re eager to co-operate; now he and Sam just have to hope none of these hicks remembers any of the times the Winchesters’ faces have been on TV, and they’ll be golden.

Dean does his best to steer Rutherford aside from his friends, but they follow after, looming just beyond arm’s reach like spectres. This time he does look to Sam, and signals with a flick of his eyes. Without a word the big guy inserts himself as a stone-faced barrier between Dean and Rutherford and the rest of the group: he can loom better.

“Alright,” Dean speaks low through curling blue smoke, “I know you’ve already talked to the local brass about this, and I know it’s gotta be hard, but I need to know if you noticed anything off about Jenny before she went missing.”

Rutherford shakes his head. “No sir. Typical teenager, you know, sullen one moment, sunshine and daisies the next, fightin’ with her mama, then everything’s fine, always wanting to chatter on the phone and run around with her friends. She didn’t run away,” he says firmly, catching Dean’s eyes and boring in.

“Okay,” Dean nods with his brows up. From the sound of it there was some hassle about that before. Not surprising, given that was his own first assumption, too. “No new habits, then; any new friends, hanging out with a different crowd?”

“Naw. There ain’t a lot of kids to choose from when it comes to making friends and she stuck with hers pretty close. They grew up together, that bunch.” Rutherford keeps his head up and jaw set despite a fragility creeping in around his eyes and the corners of his mouth.

That has Dean’s ears pricking, though, and he knows the sound of Sam half-turning to look at them even though his brother’s at his back. Might as well get another perspective since it’s being laid at their feet. When he asks, “What bunch was that exactly?”, he’s careful to flatten his voice out to suggest he’s seeking confirmation instead of starting empty-handed. A different mask for every circumstance.

“Well Jenny runs around with that Will Greene’s kid and uh.” Their witness, if he can be called that, shifts his weight from one foot to the other and tilts his head, brows twitching inward. Dean’s brow furrows too during the pause. Any moment now there’s going to be some finger-snapping to help the memories come— “Uhm. Li’l Russ Cooper and the Waters boy.”

“When did you see these others last?” Sam cuts in.

Another pause. “Oh it must’a been—”

He stops. Dean’s brows rise. The guy doesn’t look like he’s collecting his thoughts to lie. If anything he looks like someone who just walked into a room looking for something but then forgot what it was before he could find it.

Steve scratches the back of his neck. “Well it must’a been around Christmas.”

Dean fidgets his tongue along his top teeth as he digests this. Sam catches his eye with a wild expression and shoulders drawing up stiff, but Dean nods all the same. “That was the last time they were all together, to your knowledge?”

“As far as I know,” Rutherford nods. His thin frame relaxes as if some argument had just been put to rest. “But, I reckon they’d still hang around at school. I just, you know, I can’t recall really seeing them around lately.”

By now Sam has pulled his mask of sang-froid back on to face them more fully. Even if none of these rednecks know any better, Dean knows where the cracks show.

“Mister Rutherford— Steve,” Sam rumbles, “can you tell us when and where you last saw Jenny?”

“Of course. She was at the house, Tuesday night, two weeks ago. My wife and I’ve been worried half to death.”

He says it with honest conviction but Sam’s jaw works soundlessly for a second before he manages, “Thank you, Steve. If it’s all right could we come by tomorrow and talk with Mrs Rutherford too?”

They’re met with eager agreement, of course, and a round of handshakes and eyes that brim with the sort of gratitude that makes Dean just a little queasy because God, he hates giving people false hope. Parents most of all.

No. He takes that back. Kids are worse. It’s always worse when it’s kids.

—

“So that’s fuckin’ weird,” Dean mutters as soon as they’re out of earshot. “Any’a that seem fishy to you?”

“You mean aside from the fact that not one of those guys could remember seeing any of these kids in a podunk one-horse trap like this in the last two weeks or more?” Sam deadpans.

“At least their stories match up. …What, what’s with that look?”

His brother chooses just that moment to get all closed-mouthed and cryptic. “I’ll show you in a sec.”

That turns out to mean back in the B&B, in Sam’s room, which he’s apparently volunteering as HQ for this hunt since he’s staked out wall space for a flow chart already (when did he even have time?). While Dean’s turning the two interviews over in his head, Sam pulls something up on his laptop.

“Rutherford said he last saw Jenny at home Tuesday, two weeks ago.”

“Right,” Dean agrees, trying his best to be patient. Or act patient, at least.

“That was the twenty-fifth of last month.”

“Right,” Dean nods. Okay, maybe acting is a stretch. His fingers twitch. Fuck, why does he always forget about these little effects nicotine has? Bad enough he’s already gotten a whiff of his right hand where he’d tucked the cigarette between two fingers. God. He’s gonna have to bathe in Lysol to get the smell out and what’s the hold-up with this damn web page or whatever?

But finally Sam turns the laptop around to face Dean, indicating he should read, and it’s that first news article that’d brought them out here in the first place. Dean frowns at the screen as he scans over it.

_Three teenagers...reported missing Saturday...police search, 72 hours, no results as of Wednesday—_

Wednesday, March 5th.

When Dean snaps his head up to blurt, “They’ve only been missing a week at most,” his little brother is already staring, nodding.

“They were reported missing over the weekend,” Sam points out. He sounds as grim about it as he looks. Their chances of finding these kids alive keep looking slimmer and slimmer. He sighs through his nose and closes the laptop. “You think he’s in on it?”

“It’s his _own kid_ ,” Dean spits incredulously. But the alternative is that Steve Rutherford was telling the truth, and what kind of a father would—

Sam breaks eye contact, shaking his head. “Don’t rule it out yet.”

He won’t, but Dean paces right out the door, down the stairs, onto the creaking porch. It’s not a retreat. It’s just. The need for fresh air is overwhelming all of a sudden. It’s warm outside and Dean’s blood is running just a little too cold.

—

The next morning Mrs Barnett underestimates just how much a pair of men the Winchester’s size will eat at breakfast. She’s a good hostess, so they give her warm-voiced lies when she asks how they slept. Even though she doesn’t seem to buy it (neither of them looks like he’s gotten a solid night’s rest in years) she just smiles back and puts on another round of biscuits and gravy.

That’s the way to deal with it, Dean figures. He’d call Sam out on how ashen he’s looking lately and the cough he tries to conceal, but he knows he’d get called out right back on the fact that he’s only aware of how little Sam slept thanks to having been awake all night himself a wall away. The urge to fuss and find out what’s wrong with his little brother is an itch under his skin like craving booze or trying to remember something important. That’s the price to be paid for Sam’s tacit acceptance of what’s wrong with Dean.

There’s a fork-duel for the last sausage patty: Dean puts up a good enough fight for Sam to feel smug over winning, and then grouches to make it look like he didn’t lose on purpose. For just a moment he can remember a time when his little brother’s smile was the sun. It’s faded now, but it soothes the itch all the same.

Mrs Barnett’s bustle and clatter is a constant presence, so they leave off the brainstorming for now. Instead they mutter back and forth:

“Hellhound.”

“Daeva.”

Sam’s forehead scrunches as if trying to recall something. “Acheri.”

“A cherry?” Dean grimaces in disappointment.

“No, uh. A-C-H-E-R-I. In Greek it’s probably more like ‘a-carry’. It’s a demon,” he explains. “I fought one in Cold Oak.”

They both fidget, disquieted. Dean clears his throat. “Incubus,” he mutters, and tries not to look directly at Sam’s grateful face.

“Skinwalker.”

“Wraith. Wait—” Dean grimaces again, cussing at himself, and bangs the tabletop with a fist while flopping back in his chair.

“That’s a W, not an R!” Sam crows, and just like that the miasma of traumas long past that had just threatened to choke them is forgotten.

Dean groans as he pushes away from the table. That one he didn’t lose on purpose. “Fuck you and your fancy silent letters. Fine. Shit. I’ll take the records, you...go try not to scare everyone off thinking Godzilla’s attacking when you show up at the door.”

“You’re the sorest loser,” Sam croons, as if he isn’t the smuggest goddamn winner and as if he doesn’t sulk when he loses too. His damned stork legs bear him out towards the door. “Meet back up at the diner at two. That ought’a be enough time for you to dig through a few decades of mouldy documents.”

The mile-wide, shit-eating grin that accompanies this generous statement is the cherry on the fucking cake. Dean’s lip curls and he fires off a derisive impersonation at Sam’s back. He waits for the door to shut on the sound of his little brother’s coughing to let his expression soften into something quieter that he’ll never name.

—

The research leg of this job sucks every bit as much as he thought it would. Were they not avoiding legitimate law enforcement like the plague he’d skip down the highway to Perryville and sweet-talk his way into the county records; but if he can get through this without actually having to enter a police station (where the rednecks are guaranteed to be armed) so much the better. That leaves him with the local option: a self-styled Louisburg Town Historian who Dean is pretty fucking sure is just a hoarder with a sign in his yard.

Leslie Waters is so old he doesn’t so much walk as he shudders hard enough to inch forward in a shuffling gait that makes Dean want to call him Igor. He claims his memory is "sharp as a tack and stuffed like a turkey", which Dean doubts, thank you, but the guy's willing enough to provide when Dean asks after any records that mention missing persons.

It just takes him ages to fetch them, is all, and shuts down the hunter's offers to look on his own.

That leaves Dean sitting at a great oval table that's as deeply-gouged in places as its surface is obsessively polished. He flicks a long look at the shabby chaos surrounding him from floor to ceiling. The place looks like a real library's periodical section caught fire and someone dumped the surviving documents in one little house wherever they could.

Trouble is, as much as he might try, Dean is just truly not a patient man. Before long he’s itching, twitching, fingers flexing like he’s still riding last night’s nicotine buzz or like he’s been popping bennies or like he needs a knife in his hands, grinding his teeth over how _slow_ the old man moves. Waters won’t even relent and hand off papers as he finds them. It’s torture. And Dean knows torture.

Slowly but surely, though (emphasis on the slow), Igor (yeah okay Dean's not even sorry) calls out that he's found the last of them. He shuffles out into the reading room bearing an armload of newspapers, scrapbooks, and ledgers dating back to—

"Nineteen thirty-four," Leslie croaks.

"Jesus," Dean mutters. The stack is alarmingly tall. He has to turn his head and snort-sneeze away the dust kicked up when it gets thumped down in front of him. "That's uh. That's an awful lotta missing persons for one little town, ain't it?"

The old man shrugs. "Just 'cause someone goes missin' don't mean they're lost. No one I know’s ever gone missing. Take that as you will. If you get those out of order," he warns, wagging a craggy hand that reminds Dean of birds of prey, "don't bother trying to put 'em back when you're done. Just leave ‘em be. I know where everything goes."

"No problem," Dean nods, and waits for Leslie to hobble into another room before adding in an undertone meant only for his own ears: "A place for everything and everything in its fucking place."

He'd kill for a smoke.

—

Dean stares at the stack for just a moment longer. He allows himself a sigh to express his displeasure to no one in particular before getting to work. It only makes sense to start with the most recent newspapers and work his way back. The latest is one he’s already seen on Sam’s laptop: three teens gone missing at once, search called off after three grueling days. His brother had mentioned that there’ve been seven this year so far, so he’s expecting the next two articles, though they’re both little more than blurbs. People missing, last seen in this area, searches inconclusive.

Last year was lighter, though that doesn’t strike Dean as something to feel good about: one or two in a month, fifteen total. They’re all single articles. There’s next to no follow-up, nothing about ongoing searches, nothing to remind readers that someone’s still out there. Dean chalks that up to not having every consecutive issue of the local rag.

Except—

There’s one article from 2009 that’s so, so vague. It doesn’t name the pair of backpackers last seen near Old Town. It doesn’t name any of the other thirty-seven that purportedly disappeared around Louisburg that year, not a single one of them found. He moves on into 2008, 2007, 2005, and the numbers drop to one or two a year.

One or two missing a year, then thirty-seven. Dean’s stomach twists just this side of painfully. Something woke up in ‘09 and he’s pretty fucking sure what set off the alarm clock.

“Oh, Sammy,” he whispers to himself.

No, no he can’t get caught up in that. Push on. Go further back. Get lost in the work.

County newsletters give way to clippings from Little Rock's papers give way to handwritten accounts. This one’s dated 1952: A housewife’s letter to her sister (Dean assumes) tells of her hound dog spending three days and three nights standing guard near the crumbling old church ("That dreadful, dark, and dreary place, why won't they tear it down?") before coming home. She hasn’t seen her Stanley in a month, not since his last quarrel with his mother. She fears he might not want to be found.

Dean keeps on rifling through. There's no rhyme or reason to the numbers, no pattern in the who or when. They’re travelers, townsfolk, children, couples. The few that mention a particular location talk about Old Town, always Old Town, where the night is full of strange noises and birds never sing.

In terms of calendar date the reports go silent from the mid-Fifties back to the early Forties. He can only figure that was the point at which the town was resettled when the State sold off land on the cheap to raise a ghost town from the dead. According to a torn-out diary page mounted in polypropylene — just before the gap — the revival came at the price of fifteen workers vanishing into thin air, and Louisburg’s reconstruction left a stretch of abandoned properties to the south. Old Town.

And then there's the earliest ones. He squints at terrible handwriting and worse spelling as past generations gossip in letters passed down from ungrateful children to the hands of a crook-backed packrat. They’re dire things, all fire and brimstone, squarely laying the blame for the Dust Bowl and Great Depression on “sinners” of various stripes. Midway through reading one man’s tirade to his cousin about the town having died of divine retribution against...people guilty of an awful lot of things that fit Dean’s description, it’s all he can do to keep from ripping the fragile paper with fingers curling into fists. He grinds his teeth, breathes deep, and consoles himself by muttering, “I hope your line dead-ends with a happy interracial gay marriage you bigoted fucking coot” as he moves on to the next document.

The others are pretty similar. There’s an awful lot of pearl-clutching about having to leave the town behind. In wading through all that dreck something finally pings his radar: a letter from April of ‘34, right back at the very start of it all, riddled with spelling errors that have Dean squinting. It’s addressed to a Laura, signed Carl — names that mean nothing to him now, and may never, but he tries to burn them into his memory all the same.

> _The town rotted out, dear Laura. I got no intent to rot with it. Do you recall a boy we knew way back when before you wed your Joseff? I seem to rekollect he was called Otto but I coud be misstaken. He went missing, dear Laura, can you beleve it? Runt off, Sheriff said this Friday but I askt him again Sunday afternoone and he had no ider who I ment. Somthing’s verry wrong and I do not wish to find out what._
> 
> _Henry will not come. He still han’t forgave his son for leving the church behind. Says somone’s got to stay put and he’s it. Try as I mite to talk some sinse into him he’ll be in that chappel preching about the coming Jugment Day until the dust swallos it hole and him with it. I will see you in a fortnite in Cleevland but God forgive me it will be without our brother._

Cold slides down Dean’s spine despite the stifling heat of the room. He sits back, rubs his mouth, and dives back into the rest of that first year’s documents. He drags a pad he lifted from some motel ten jobs ago out of a pocket to start taking notes. There are no other mentions of Carl going missing; but if the man who penned the letter made it out alive, why would it be in the archives of the town he left behind?

Coming to think of it, though, there’s no more than one or two mentions of any given missing person no matter what decade it happened. It’s as if the town collectively forgot they were ever there — or collectively agreed not to mention it. Which means either long-range psychic interference (and that could just as well be a spell) or a town-wide, generations-old conspiracy.

Screw the notepad. It’s twenty-fucking-fourteen and his phone has a camera. Dean spends a few minutes snapping photos of articles and letters, since Igor would probably just as soon run him out with a cane as let him remove anything from the premises. As he’s squinting his way back into the afternoon sun he thinks back to the impromptu interview with Steve Rutherford, replaying it in his head as best he can. It’s almost time to meet back up with Sam. Between what he just found and Sam’s interviews, they'll bust this thing wide open. Ghost or conspiracy, they've handled worse. With any luck they’ll have this thing smoked out in time to catch Hell’s Kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UP NEXT: Chapter 4 arrives 21 September 2015.


	4. Joel 3:15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Much of the place is covered with a thick crust of dust, but swaths cut through it on the floor and occasional surfaces tell of the recent search-and-rescue. There’s no sulphur residue on the naked windowsills, but neither are there cobwebs. Not even spiders will live here. That’s what finally gets under Sam’s skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack Entries  
> [7\. Possum Pie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMjt4_q_Ouc)  
> [8\. Old Town](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjPu_budyEk)  
> [9\. Lights Out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OagjQhtgaws)

_The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining._

 

  
The more townsfolk Sam talks to the closer he comes to regretting making this his first choice. Maybe they should have stuck to the pattern they’re best at: Dean wrings info out of people with his con-man charm and Sam goes over written word with a fine-toothed comb. He’s one of the first people to come into the diner when it opens for the afternoon. He plasters a cool veneer onto his face and seizes the opportunity to talk to a few more locals while waiting for Dean.

It’s not all bad. One of them buys him a beer (which he accepts gratefully), and another recommends the possum pie (which he declines as politely and with as little disgust shown as possible). The beer is a balm against Sam's forehead as he processes the last few hours. He might be staring right at the little notepad he’s been scrawling into all day but it’s just an off-white blue of which he’s vaguely aware. He’s elsewhere: a room with a long wall stretching out to either side, space cleared in front of him for this one case. He’s hanging tacks in stories, faces, and reactions, drawing lines between them, highlighting quotes and factoids.

The red lance of a coughing fit jostles him partway out of his ersatz mind palace, leaving him scrabbling to regain his concentration. The front door opens and Dean swaggers in, and there goes the rest of his focus. His brother sits down across from him at the little acrylic-topped table and immediately digs out his phone instead of making eye contact.

“Whatever it is you’ve been doing the last couple hours you should be thanking me for taking the archives so you didn’t have to.”

Sam snorts. “Next time don’t lose.” It can’t have been that bad — just Dean’s petulance for anything remotely tedious acting up again.

“Whatever. Whatcha got?”

“A lot of I-don’t-knows and never-heard-ofs.” He hoists his beer and free hand in a helpless gesture. “Finding it hard to swallow that so many people know nothing about these missing kids in a town this small. I mean usually it’s like there are no secrets, everyone knows everyone else _and_ all their drama.”

Finally Dean lifts his eyes and leans forward. The recognition sparking there makes Sam sit straighter, ready to apply another tack to his mental link chart. “So you’re telling me in a town where people knew we were here before we could sit down to lunch, none of the locals know jack about three teenagers up and disappearing? Aside from their own parents and the kid who was there with them.”

“I know. Fishy doesn’t even begin to cover it. But this was like...they didn’t sound like they were faking it.”

Dean squints. “Just like Steve couldn’t remember seeing his daughter’s friends for a few months.”

“Yeah I thought that too. On a hunch, I tracked down Brian Green’s parents on the other side of town. Same story there. They haven’t spoken to Brian or his friends in years and the…the dad sounded like he would’ve been happier never hearing his name again.”

They both spend a moment staring at the tabletop. It’d been a long time since an interview had tested his ability to keep cool as sorely as that one had. The loathing on Mr Greene’s face had made old wounds sting. That’s the one reason to not fully regret having taken interviews. If Dean had been there, blows might have been exchanged.

His brother runs a hand over his mouth. “So apart from that you got bupkis is what you’re telling me.”

“Well not exactly. I asked around about local lore, weird things happening, and almost everyone mentioned Old Town. They—”

Sam shuts his mouth with a click as a waitress comes by to check on them, the same blue-eyed one Dean had been checking out the day before. To his mortification, Dean actually orders the possum pie, and looks at him like _he’s_ the weird one for being revolted.

“You know what, I can’t even deal with your gross eating habits right now.” (Dean has the cheek to look offended by this.) “They all mentioned Old Town, just like Brian Greene and the articles I found on the way down here did. Apparently, when the town got rebuilt after the Dust Bowl, that part stayed dead. No one’s lived there since—”

“1934?” Dean interrupts.

Sam sits up again. “Yeah,” he nods. “There was a preacher, one’a those Fundamentalist, Hellfire and Damnation types, who tried to keep people from leaving, and there’s some rumours he dipped his feet into black magic to force them to stay. Only it didn’t work. He was the last holdout before the whole place went belly-up and died shortly afterward. They said he’s supposed to be buried in an unmarked grave at the chapel.”

“Bet you it’s the graveyard those kids were looking for.” Dean’s approval is a welcome thing after talking in circles for half the day. Even if it’s a small step forward, any progress is validating. “You get a name?”

“Henry Louis, direct descendant of one of the founders” he supplies, and there’s that spark in Dean’s eyes again. “Why, did you find anything like that in the archives?”

His brother shakes his phone indicatively and drops his voice. “Yeah. Like both things as a matter of fact. I got photos but Cliff’s Notes version, people go missing all the time and then never get mentioned again. Even when the next one goes missing there’s nothing about the rest of them.”

The waitress returns and they pause again. Sam stares at the plate she sets down in front of Dean like it might be radioactive, but it doesn’t look or smell remotely like what he was expecting. There’s a lot more custard and whipped cream involved than previously anticipated. “That’s, uh.”

“Possum pie.” Dean’s giving him that look again. “It’s like the only good thing about Arkansas, dude. The Hell’d you think I was getting?”

Sam refuses to dignify this with an answer but his face heats up anyway — more so when Dean laughs, not even bothering to finish chewing first. “What’d you expect, you fuckin’ weirdo, real possum?”

“Shut up,” he grumbles. “I wouldn’t put it past you.”

Dean just shrugs like the shameless bastard he is. “If you stopped being such a prude once in a while you’d find all kinds of shit that’s good.” He looks suddenly, suspiciously uncomfortable and changes the subject before he can get called out on it – but Sam pins that one up on a section of mental wall he might as well call Someday We’re Gonna Have This Talk. “That preacher dude? There’s a letter in the archive I’m pretty sure is from his brother talking about how he won’t skip town with the rest of the family.”

New strings stretch from one tack to another on that corkboard in Sam’s head. He unpegs “night hag” and other things spring up in its place. “Suppose he did manage to make contact with something nasty. Demon or otherwise. We could be looking at cursed grounds and a vengeful spirit or poltergeist.”

“Great.” Dean’s mouth goes taut in that eloquent moue of his. “Never salted and burned an entire building before. Sounds like fun and not at all like something that would attract attention.”

Sam casts his eyes towards the roof. “You know as well as I do that’s not how it works.”

“Whatever. It’s gotta be this preacher one way or another. We’ll just do some digging of the literal kind, torch the bones, and get the Hell outta Dodge.” Dean looks him over and he knows exactly where this is about to go. “Speaking of which, you eaten yet? You look like shit.”

It’s gentler than Dean probably intended. So much for having gotten away with it. Sam grumbles something about not being hungry, and he knows that’s not gonna fly even before his brother starts hissing a lecture about keeping up his strength. It’s true, he’s really not hungry after their massive breakfast; but he knows he should be, and while he can tune out the mildly condescending rant it’s much harder to ignore the worry clenching Dean’s voice and eyes. He manages to hold out for a good two minutes before he finally agrees. At least it’ll wash out the taste of his own blood from that last coughing fit.

—

“They didn’t say why the kid went and got himself emancipated, did they?” Dean asks. It’s too conversational and he doesn’t look up.

Sam crushes a cherry tomato between his teeth to buy a the moment he needs to backtrack in his head. It’s more tart than sweet and the acid finds little places in his mouth to sting just on the periphery of sensation. “No but — they didn’t really have to. I got the impression the peace Brian Greene made with his old man only went one way.”

They’re both staring at their plates as if they were navels. Sam clears his throat. “You said you got photos of those letters and stuff. Lemme see.”

He knows his brother too well to expect visible gratitude for the change in subject, not beyond too-quick agreement. It’s all right. Faith means knowing it’s there when even when you can’t see it.

By the time they’ve polished off their meals (or at least as much as Sam can stomach) they’ve caught each other up on the facts as they each understand them. They sit back, study each other a moment, and nod in wordless agreement. Time to head out.

—

The true boundaries of civilisation are much hazier than maps would have you think. In a city or even most mid-sized towns, there’s a gradual unraveling that happens as you get further out from the middle. Some cities sprawl out for so many miles they melt right into the next city without much breath in between. Most of the places Sam’s been trickle off like leaky taps: bustles of stores and houses giving way to clusters of lights scattered amongst the trees, and finally, darkness.

Even in a town with maybe a dozen named streets the curve shouldn’t be quite this steep.

At a twenty-five-mile-per-hour crawl it takes all of two minutes to reach Old Town from the general store, and the second they do, a cold thrill makes Sam squirm like there’s spider running down his back. The tops of the beech and pine trees that tower over them are still as death. The canopy slices up the sunlight, and dead leaves pile up into little drifts across the unpaved road. At some point someone half-assed an attempt to erect a fence between Old Town and New Town. If anything that only heightens the sense of driving into a cemetery.

There’s scarcely enough left of what must have been the heart of Louisburg to even properly call ruins. The bricks and planks have been stripped down to the rottenest foundation, and what little remains of those is dominated by eruptions of dogwood and sedge. The more complete buildings slouch like drunkards under their own wretched weight, complete with filthy, broken bottles and other smatterings of indistinct trash that offer the only sign of human activity. They wear their era in their artless architecture. All that aggressive regrowth gives way in turn to trunks cut off ankle- to waist-high, standing lifeless and grey as headstones, bare even of moss.

There’s no mistaking the chapel. The barn-sized building sags atop a small rise framed by grass that looks like it’s never woken up from winter. Its sides bulge and splinter like the skin of a drowned animal; its bell tower has collapsed nearly inside-out, spilling its slates into its own innards. Bulging gaps where doors and windows once hung amid the bleached-grey pine exterior gives the semblance of empty sockets staring out of an ancient, misshapen skull. Here, too, there was an attempt to build a fence at some point, and another to rebuild it, as evidenced by both rebars and fractured posts jutting up around it like ribs. Flashes of yellow catch Sam’s eye on the approach: the remains of where someone tied police tape off and cut it down, again, and again, and again.

The Impala lurches to a stop, and the brothers take a moment to digest the sight.

Dean puts words to what they’re both thinking: “What a fucking dump.”

They hesitate a minute longer. They’ve both been to Hell. This is nothing.

The next part is rote. They check their guns, knives, and the flashlights that still have price stickers plastered along their thick plastic rims. Sam fetches their shovels and a small canister of kerosene out of the trunk; Dean takes his sawed-off shotgun, an iron crowbar, and a fistful of shells packed with rock salt. Ruby’s knife finds its place in Sam’s jacket. The silver blade of some dead angel takes up a place in Dean’s. Since they took the time to change into their civvies back at the B&B they both have pockets and holsters aplenty to carry the tools of their trade. Dead grass crunches under their boots as they make their way up the little hill.

It’s quieter than it ought to be. No birds, no small animals. Even the drone of cicadas is distant. It’s not that uncommon to find a dead zone around haunted or cursed grounds but this….

“Dead zones usually mean something big,” Sam points out quietly, and Dean shrugs. “And this is a pretty extensive one. Dean I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kind of radius on a dead zone before. It’s gotta be nearly fifty yards. You still think we’re just dealing with a spirit here?”

Dean keeps his voice low too. “I gotta be honest, I’m not too sure about that anymore, but we don’t have much else to go on so we’ll just have to play it by ear. You know what I find weird?”

“Everything about this place?”

Dean glances over his shoulder and swipes a finger through the air. “Who the Hell puts a graveyard _inside_ the church grounds instead of outside?”

It’s been bugging Sam too, ever since their first interview. “Plenty of churches have those. Only they put ‘em underground and call ‘em mausoleums.”

They rove a circle around the chapel looking for the entrance least likely to collapse on them in a stiff breeze. It wasn’t visible from their vantage on the road, but a stone wall nearly as tall as the chapel itself wraps around behind, connecting the main building to the rectory. The jagged remains of barbed wire curls around the top, little more than long splinters of rust.

“Okay this is just fucking weird,” Dean says, brows knitted and tone flat. “The more I see of this place the less I like it.”

“Maybe they had problems with graverobbers. This place was built in the 1860s.”

“Yeah by paranoid lunatics,” Dean spits. “The rectory’s gotta have a back door into the yard, let’s go through there.”

A lifetime ago, when they were a couple of young bucks out on a paranormal road trip looking for their father and the Apocalypse was just a story, they would have thrown their jackets over and scaled the shoddy stones. Their knees are a lot older now. Sam isn’t about to say it but he’s grateful his brother’s so willing to look for another way. They click their flashlights on and slip through a front door hanging off a single hinge.

The little house reeks of age and rot. Like the rest of Old Town it sags to one side, but it’s more sturdily built; still, the ravages of time have eaten away at it. The furnishings are long since gone; part of a chair leg here, an unidentifiable scrap of cloth there, some modern trash, and nothing more. The floorboards (what’s left of them) creak and sink beneath their feet. Much of the place is covered with a thick crust of dust, but swaths cut through it on the floor and occasional surfaces tell of the recent search-and-rescue. There’s no sulphur residue on the naked windowsills, but neither are there cobwebs. Not even spiders will live here. That’s what finally gets under Sam’s skin.

His heart thuds in his throat; adrenaline spreads through him like ice. A sane man would turn right back around, get back in the car, and drive home without a backwards glance; but the Winchesters are hunters, and that job description generally precludes sanity. His instinct isn’t to run. It’s to track and destroy.

Dean was right. In what must have been the kitchen — one of three rooms — a door with tall, shattered glass panes that remind Sam of broken teeth opens out to the fenced-in churchyard. They step out onto lifeless grey soil in the shade of that ridiculous wall and both of them shiver. It’s easily ten degrees cooler here.

“Oh man, I don’t even need an EMF reader out here, this shit’s off the charts.” Dean cocks his shotgun. “All things considered I think maybe we should do the digging in shifts here, keep one of us on lookout. You said we’re looking for an unmarked grave.” He uses the gun to gesture across the yard where the leafless, twisted corpse of a shade tree sends more shadows streaking across a handful of narrow headstones.

Sam leads the way, jamming one shovel into the dirt so it stands upright. The soil’s fully barren and only a little impacted. The practical part of him points out the dead zone will make it easier to dig. Then he gets a good look at the headstones themselves, and a groan punches out of him. “Yeah, just one problem with that.”

They’re all blank.

Every last one.

The brothers take a moment to stare at this and collect their thoughts as if between the two of them might will the situation to be different. For a second Sam almost believe it works, because there on the far row is one that does have something carved into it: “John 11 10.”

“Eleven ten?” Dean wonders aloud. “November 1910?” They exchange a look, push their chins out, and shrug. It’s as good a guess as any.

“If that’s the case it’s not our ghost,” Sam points out, “because A, marked grave, and B, this preacher was still alive then.”

He doesn’t like the look Dean gets on his face then. Not one bit. He’s setting his jaw and hardening his eyes and pressing his lips together like he’s made a decision neither of them is going to like.

“Well I guess we salt and burn ‘em all then.” Dean grabs the second shovel and gets to work.

It’s not easy holding back the groan this time, but a very narrow margin he manages. “For the record I think this is a bad idea and I hate it.”

But he digs anyway.

—

Sam’s faster at digging, but Dean’s got him beat for endurance, if only because of the trials’ changes ravaging his body. Digging up multiple graves is hours worth of work. The stench of fuel and burning bone churn his stomach up like an angry, rolling sea. At some point in the afternoon he slips off to fetch water bottles from the car – and to double over coughing and retching in peace. Dean’s so damned thirsty when he gets back he doesn’t even accuse Sam of just wanting a break.

He sits down on the bare dirt and wipes sweat from his brow. The sun has almost slipped from the sky now, leaving them bathed in cold blue shade. They’ve only gotten five prospective ghosts burned out of fourteen. The buzz under his skin won’t go away.

Finally he gives in and pipes up about it. “Hey uh. Call me crazy but…maybe we should call it a day, get out of here before dark. Since we still don’t know for certain what this thing is.”

“Okay, you’re crazy,” Dean deadpans. “Never fucking stopped us before. You really wanna give up now?”

“On the digging, Dean, yeah, that’s exactly what I wanna do. I just –look, okay, whatever this preacher’s turned into, vengeful spirit or poltergeist or demon, or, or whatever…” He spreads his hands. “He’s powerful enough to give a whole town memory problems and form a dead zone for half a block. I saw he play it safe, get cleaned up, do some more research, come back tomorrow bright and early. Otherwise if we haven’t burned the right one yet, we’re gonna be out here after dark with something we don’t know for sure how to fight.”

“An iron crowbar’ll still go through a souped-up ghost,” Dean grumbles. He chews on Sam’s words for a long moment, though, casting little glances his way. “Man it’s not like you to puss out on a job. How you holdin’ up?”

There it is. He can elect not to mention his dizziness or the feverish clench of his gut, but there’s no way Dean hasn’t heard him coughing while they work. Guilt settles on his shoulders like a leaden shawl. The shame-driven need to not be a burden only sours his stomach more, but at the moment confession serves his purposes.

“I feel like puking my guts out and sleeping through the rest of the month but other than that I’m fine. I just really think we should be better-prepared if we have to take this thing on on its own turf.” He makes eye contact for emphasis and pretends he doesn’t notice the concern bordering on panic on his brother’s face.

“Guess you’ve got a point,” Dean grates out. “We’re halfway done here anyway. If we come back after breakfast and bust our asses we’ll have this case closed in time for lunch. C’mon.”

Dust clouds off their clasped hands as Dean helps him up. Sam casts a last glance at the little headstones before they duck into the rectory. It’s just one of a dozen things about this place scratching at the base of his skull but he can’t shake the feeling that there’s something significant about it, if he could only remember what. They reach the Impala just in time to see the last sliver of the sun disappear behind the trees.

It’s also just in time to see a long-legged figure slipping into the chapel with a flashlight and hear a voice calling out: “Jenny?”

“Shit,” Sam hisses.

“Fuck,” Dean agrees.

So much for research. “Was that Steve Rutherford? What the fuck is he doing?”

“The fuck you think he’s doing, Sam, he’s looking for his kid,” Dean barks. That particular strained, high-pitched tone only comes out when shit hits the fan. Rutherford must’ve gotten it into his head to come looking for his missing daughter where reports placed her last. But if the right bones didn’t burn….

Sam cusses. “We gotta get him out of there, come on.”

Their shovels and kerosene tank clatter to the ground by the Impala’s wheels. Dean’s already sprinting back up the rise calling after the other man. Sam follows on his heels as fast as he can manage without letting nausea bowl him over. His brother waits for him so they can burst in together through the splintered remains of the chapel’s front doors.

It’s like plunging into the ocean under a new moon: biting cold, and so dark his brain can’t quite process the shift. The light that should be streaming in from windows and the ruined roof and between broken beams someone never made it inside. It’s an underground darkness, a tomb darkness, a Cage darkness. Blood roars in Sam’s ears. Instinct has his Taurus in one hand and a flashlight in the other before he’s even aware that he’s moving; a matching beam of light illuminates his brother’s wide-eyed face. They call for Steve again but what they find instead makes the air leave Sam’s lungs all at once.

There’s no possible way this is the chapel. It’s too small — more the size of the rectory’s front room — and intact if grubby. There are no widows but a single door stands ahead of them hanging slightly ajar. Someone — or something — has gouged letters and numbers into it: John 11:10.

Sam swallows hard. It wasn’t a name and date on that headstone; it was a Bible verse. He wracks his brain but that verse eludes him. “Still think we’re dealing with a poltergeist?” he snaps.

Dean elbows him and gestures behind them. “No Sammy. I’m pretty fucking sure we’re not.”

The doors they entered through are gone, and they’re alone in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All aboard the express train to Nopeville!


	5. John 10:22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They take the next hall at a trot, calling back and forth. He catches a glimpse of more lettering on the wall, something about eyes being plucked out by ravens, but they hustle on and try not to gag on the smell. The whispers are louder now. It’s practically in his ear. His forearm brushes the wall; it’s wet, sticky, and squirming like a pile of larvae, and he jerks away as if burnt.
> 
> “You okay?” Sam whispers.
> 
> Dean grinds his teeth. “Peachy. We’re setting this place on fire, mark my words. Burn it to the _ground,_ Sammy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack Entries  
> [10\. Revelation](https://youtu.be/i62rxJDonaw)  
> [11\. Lost and Found](https://youtu.be/Ro_WXcCHjRc)  
> [12\. This Little Light of Mine](https://youtu.be/_4hm14b7pkQ)  
> [13\. Grim Tidings](https://youtu.be/Xvu0wnD2xp8)

_A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness._

 

 

“Fuck,” Dean hisses.

“Shit,” Sam agrees.

Curls of dingy paint peel from the walls in slow motion, like flakes of ash thrown off a bonfire. Whatever lies beneath that paint glistens dully under the sweep of Dean’s flashlight. If he didn’t know any better he’d swear it ripples and flexes just as he’s looking away. Calling out “Steve?!” into the dark seems like a terrible idea but the name leaves his lips anyway.

Something akin to a whimpering sob answers from beyond the door. Both of them stand up straighter and lock onto it. Sam steps forward and Dean fans out beside him. He hoists the twelve-gauge, ready for his brother to open it. He waits. Listens. Seconds drag by in silence save their own forced-steady breath. The narrow hallway beyond stretches out long enough that their flashlights fail to illuminate its end. The walls are in worse shape, that much he can make out, cracked and stained and full of gouges.

“This is fucked up,” Dean whispers. “This is like…Trickster level fuckery. Gabriel level fuckery.” It’s not exactly a Trickster god’s MO but that’s cold comfort.

Their voices’ echoes become the dry rattle of laboured breath. It’s just quiet enough that it could be one of them but by God he knows Sam’s breathing sick or sound, calm or panicked, and that is sure as Hell not Sam.

Sam shakes his head. “Real or not, there’s only one way to go.”

Dean takes point. The floor gives under his feet like a bed of mould. Neither of them has enough room to stretch their arms out to the side. Sam has mentioned stories of strange noises. Brian Greene had said there’d been noises. Being told about them is one thing. Hearing all these barely-there chokes, groans, and whimpers breaking the silence from all directions, now that’s another. Some of them only come from overhead or underfoot: chain links click against each other, against wooden beams. The further down the hall they go the more certain he becomes there’s a slight downward tilt to it. More and more he’s certain, too, that something’s moving in the walls at the corners of his vision. His heart is a tympani roll against his ribs. God, he hopes he’s imagining the smell of rust and steel. All that’s missing is sulphur and fire — and the memory of that is so close he can taste his own guts all over again.

It’s not his old mentor’s voice he’s hearing among the whispers, it’s not. Those aren’t the souls he’d taken under his knife, they’re not. Gotta remember where they are. And where they aren’t.

Sam bumps into him from behind. “Watch it!”

“You watch it,” he barks back on reflex as if the collision hadn’t been because Dean stopped short. He adjusts the grip on his gun and flashlight: the cold hasn’t kept his palms from sweating. His light catches something high on the wall in the process. “Hey. On your nine, up there.”

Stenciled black letters as tall as Dean’s hand proclaim, FOR THE GREAT DAY OF HIS WRATH IS COME; AND WHO SHALL BE ABLE TO STAND?

A muscle jumps in Sam’s jaw. “Revelation. Shit.” That chapter has always been popular with the tent-revival, Hellfire-and-Brimstone crowds. Especially during the Dust Bowl.

“Yeah well they were a couple decades early for the Apocalypse, weren’t they,” Dean sneers. And that’s when his flashlight — his store-fresh, well-tested flashlight — starts to flicker and dim.

The letters froth like boiling tar, and run in thick black streams that sear through the paint to pool in the scratches and scaled-off pocks. Dean gags on the smell of ruptured intestine. What doesn’t dribble down to the floor forms new words:

HOLD FAST, AND REPENT. IF THEREFORE THOU SHALT NOT WATCH, I WILL COME ON THEE AS A THIEF, AND THOU SHALT NOT KNOW WHAT HOUR I WILL COME UPON THEE.

“Ohhh fuck you very much, I am gonna torch your ass—” He catches his breath at the sight of mist wafting from his own mouth. “Sam. Sam it’s coming, we gotta move!”

“Go go go. Door, straight ahead.”

The floorboards crunch under their feet now. The sounds of clattering chain and shrieking, twisting metal shakes the walls from behind them, and God only knows how Dean manages not to stumble. The strobe of his flashlight catches a door and he barrels through it with Sam hot on his heels. Not close enough for comfort though. He drops the guttering light to seize his brother’s jacket and haul him into the next room with him. They throw their weight against the door to slam it shut just as a great dark _thing_ lurches by, large enough to scrape the ceiling.

“The _fuck_ is that?!” Dean yelps. It had teeth in too many places but he could be wrong, it’s so dark—

“I _told you_ it wasn’t a fucking poltergeist!” Sam’s about to say more but the thing in the hallway bashes up against the door hard enough to make their legs quake and their feet slip out from under them. Reeking black liquid — the same substance as the “paint” if the stench of offal is anything to go by — gushes in beneath the door frame. It’s cold enough to feel from his boots. There’s barely enough time to stand before the creature slams the door again. It bellows out a noise that reminds Dean of a car crusher; its undertones sound like sobbing children. And coughing— fuck, that’s Sam, coughing his goddamned lungs out at the worst possible time.

He could just stand back and open fire, of course, but a thing that size, if salt doesn’t work, they’re fucked. He looks down at his feet. The smell makes him retch and if they make it out of this alive he promises himself a new pair of boots.

“Daevas don’t leave ectoplasm,” he blurts.

“Are you even sure that shit’s ectoplasm?” Sam coughs, shining his flashlight down on the substance. It’s frothy and thin, more like saliva than any ectoplasm he’s seen before.

“I’m not even sure it’s a daeva!!”

The door shakes once more. Wood splinters, but it holds. The creature roars its frustration and goes quiet, leaving the brothers heaving for breath. They hold stock-still and count seconds in their heads (or Dean does anyway; Sam sounds like he’s trying to hold back another coughing fit). At three hundred, Dean eases away from the door to retrieve his flashlight. It flickers at his touch, and dies instantly almost as soon as he has it in hand.

“Sonofabitch.”

Sam shrugs. “Can’t say it’s unexpected. We gotta find Steve before that thing does. Or before it comes back. D’you see another door?”

He shines his flashlight around, and Dean tries not to think about the fact that it looks dimmer than before. What he can’t ignore is how similar this is to the first room: the same peeling paint, the same soggy floorboards, the same low ceiling. In the middle of one wall stands a door hanging ajar, and suddenly it’s not the stench of the black liquid turning Dean’s stomach. They step towards it, footsteps squelching. It has words and numbers carved into it: not John 11:10 as Dean had (only half-rationally) feared, but Micah 3:6. That’s one he knows. The script is larger, the gouges less steady.

Dean tucks the dead flashlight into a jacket pocket and swipes a hand over his mouth. “Micah 3’s about cannibals and false prophets. One of those ‘God’s gonna cut you down’ chapters. More about our Pastor Louis?”

“Probably. If I could remember John 11:10 it’s probably related too. Good news is, if this thing is a daeva or some other kind of demon, we can kill it—” Sam slips Ruby’s knife out and shines the light on it. “—Or at least exorcise it.”

“Yeah,” Dean huffs, “but if both flashlights go out we’re up Shit Creek without a paddle. Besides, daevas are low level. This crap’s pretty top-tier.” He nods towards the door, and sucks in a deep breath as Sam pulls it open. Beyond is a hallway that stretches out far enough that the other side is lost in darkness beyond the flashlight’s failing reach. They both curse under their breath, and the words echo like a death rattle. “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”

“Jenny? Jenny are you in here? Hello?”

The Winchesters stand bolt-upright like a pair of hounds.

“That’s him!” Dean paws at Sam’s sleeve and charges into the dark with only a single column of light to show the way. He’s done stupider things before and come out alive. Even before the Apocalypse he never believed a benevolent God was watching him, and he knows better than to pray for help now, but fucked if he wouldn’t mind the company of one of His messengers.

 _It’s even right up your alley_ , he thinks frantically, but the seraph doesn’t answer his prayer either. They’ll have words about that next time Dean sees him. Assuming they survive.

The noises only grow worse. The crunching sounds Brian had described are the bones shattering between something’s teeth. Pneumoniac breathing surrounds them, chain slithers above, and someone’s calling his name, whispering for help, whispering to stop, quiet sobs for mercy, and there’s a sound trying to come out of him that can’t decide if it’s laughter or a scream. There’s a splinter in his hand but something in back of his head keeps telling him it’s metal, the first cut of ten thousand to come.

Sam calls out for Steve again; his voice has a sharp clarity that breaks through the Hellfire flashes and keeps Dean grounded in the now. The boards spring beneath his feet like he’s treading on a pile of meat. He doesn’t dare look down to confirm or dispel the notion. The smells of blood and rust assault him, stronger now. Sparing a glance at either side as Sam searches for another door gives him glimpses of more writing on the wall. More acidic black letters burning through the paint offer condemnations of sin, calls for repentance, warnings of the End of Days.

“Steve, where are you?” Sam yells. He doubles over coughing. All this running is going to rattle him apart. A pang of guilt tightens Dean’s chest, but it can’t be helped.

“Stay put, we’re coming to get you out of here,” Dean chimes in. How, he has no idea yet.

Not too distantly, Rutherford’s voice calls out again: “Off— Officers? What the Hell is going on?”

The end of the hallway is still nowhere in sight, but at last they come by another door opening up into another small room. Paint drips off the walls in wet black streaks that pool in gashes that bring claws to mind, some of them forming the names of Bible verses. Dean doesn’t even bother trying to suppress a storm of curse words pouring out of his mouth. He comes out of this little fit with Sam watching him steadily, near as he can tell. His little brother lets it slide without comment, instead flashing the light around yet again. It flickers and grows dimmer, cutting out every few seconds. This time they don’t stick around, but head straight for the door as soon as they hear Steve’s voice.

They take the next hall at a trot, calling back and forth. He catches a glimpse of more lettering on the wall, something about eyes being plucked out by ravens, but they hustle on and try not to gag on the smell. The whispers are louder now. It’s practically in his ear. His forearm brushes the wall; it’s wet, sticky, and squirming like a pile of larvae, and he jerks away as if burnt.

“You okay?” Sam whispers.

Dean grinds his teeth. “Peachy. We’re setting this place on fire, mark my words. Burn it to the _ground_ , Sammy.”

Sam’s light lands on a doorway just in time to flicker off, on, off, in quick succession. It doesn’t come back on.

“No no no no no,” Sam chants, shaking it hard enough that the batteries rattle. “Damn it, _damn it!_ ”

“Sonofabitch, I knew that was coming. It’s just up ahead, come on….” Jaw clenched, Dean slows down and strains to see something anything, but without their flashlights the only thing he can see are the grey bursts of a brain struggling to make sense of the lack of visual input. Fuck, he doesn’t wanna have to do this, but he holds his breath, braces himself, and reaches out to run a hand along the wall to feel for a door frame. It’s meat, it’s jagged wooden splinters, it’s writhing maggots, and it’s all Dean can do not to jerk back whimpering again. Slick noises squelch from where his fingers run through the nauseating wrongness where plaster should be. A sudden pressure at his shoulder makes him gasp but it’s Sam, gripping his coat to keep track of him.

“I’ve got a flare,” Sam murmurs, and Dean nearly stumbles out of sheer relief. “If we can find Steve without it I’ll save it until we need it.”

“Here’s hoping.” Something forces his fingers to bend — finally it’s wood under his fingers again, and he feels around for a handle. “And here’s a door.”

He presses his ear to it for half a second before thinking better of that move. It’s mucus-wet and ice-cold, and the whispers are louder: the ragged breathing, the hitching sobs, a constant slither of chain links. If it weren’t so dark he’d bet he’d see his breath. “It’s in there,” he whispers; “stand back.”

Dean counts backwards from three, yanks the door open, fires off a salt round, and everything goes to Hell.

—

As the shotgun’s flash illuminates the thing they’ve been hunting — or maybe more accurately, that’s been hunting them — the first coherent thought that crosses Dean’s mind is _It’s not invisible._ The next several thoughts are jumbled horror-static that add up to, _What the fuck_ is _that thing?!_

A congealed mass of quivering, pitch-black gore takes up a third of the room. It roars — rent metal and hysterical weeping — from a dozen mouths lined in teeth as long as his hand surrounded by rolling, too-human eyes at the end of spidery limbs dripping sludge at every movement. The rock salt blast fractures part of it into a wisp of smoke thick enough to be demonic, and it shudders, recoils, but neither dissipates nor retreats.

“ _Sam!!_ ” He scrambles backwards as he chambers another round. As soon as his back hits the wall he fires again. That time it was close enough to see the cluster of what might once have been human heads fused together with something that blurs the line between tar and flesh, wrapped tight with rust-pocked chain. “Now would be a good time for that flare, Sammy!”

Not that he wants to see more of this thing per se, but he needs some assurance he isn’t going to shoot his brother. Even though Dean scrunches his eyes shut the flare is a painful burst beside him. Before he can do more than yell Sam charges in, knife swinging. Dean follows and tries to flank the thing, only to get batted into a wall as if he weighed nothing. By the phosphorus light he watches Sam sink his knife into a skull-like structure. The entire beast shudders, howling loud enough to shake the black-bleeding walls. He watches for the telltale Hellfire spark that signals a demon’s death, but it gives off no light. Even as that limb goes limp the creature reaches out for Sam with more many-segmented structures lined in snapping jaws.

Panic floods Dean’s limbs. He has one directive, one drive above all other things: before safety, before happiness, before himself. This thing _cannot_ get to Sam. He gives in to the panic he’s been holding back and lets it transform into a bearlike rage.

Dean’s back on his feet like a freight train. He charges the creature again and fires round after round until the gun clicks empty to drive it back, and slashes at it with the barrel despite a bonfire pain in his shoulder. As the demon — monster — _thing_ shrieks and falls back Dean spies a door behind it, and he becomes aware of two things in quick succession.

One, the thing stretches out into the impenetrable black of the doorway; what they’re fighting is only part of the beast, not the whole.

Two, the one-hour flare is already strobing like it’s about to die.

Dean drops the twelve-gauge and unsheathes Hester’s sword — a trophy from a kill he wished he’d made. “Well it ain’t a demon, a night hag, or a goddamn poltergeist,” he yells to Sam, “but it doesn’t like salt, and I bet it ain’t gonna like angel blade any better! Come and get it, bitch!”

He lunges. So does the creature. The sword cleaves through inky flesh (if it really is flesh) like soft clay, and more of that putrid, freezing liquid splatters him from neck to knee. The hecatomb stench worse than a wendigo’s lair assaults his nose and throat; his stomach becomes a fist threatening to revolt. Unsteadied as he is by nausea the next thrash knocks him flat into a puddle of ichor. He can’t hold back. Dean twists onto his side, up onto one knee, and vomits.

“Dean?!” Sam calls, and it’s enough to make him rally. “Dean look out—”

The creature clubs him again, but this time it latches on with all those mouths with all their teeth, and starts dragging him across the floor. By the time he’s yelped out, “Sam!!” it’s reached a breakneck speed. The flare’s failing light disappears.

Wooden splinters shred at his cheek and lodge in his flesh through his jacket. Distantly he hears his brother calling for him and if he could see anything at all it would be red. Grip firm on the angel blade’s haft, he roars back at the creature and curls up to stab and slash at it wildly until it starts listing, then flailing to and fro instead of dragging him to…wherever it’s taking him. Wherever that is, he’s certain it’s someplace he doesn’t want to be. At last it lets go of him and retreats, bleating and clattering into the dark.

He can’t catch his breath. The Pit is so close on his heels the blood pouring onto his skin feels like flame. He’s soaked through with that cold black bile, and shivers violently where he lies on the floor. Before he makes it to his feet again he has to turn and finish emptying his stomach, and now there’s hot bile in his mouth to match.

“This must be what the Bod of Eternal Stench smelled like,” he complains to no one in particular. It seems absurd, in a way, to hear his own voice doing anything but screaming right now.

There’s no telling how long it’ll be until the creature comes back for another round. He tries to list off what he knows about it as he gropes around in the darkness for a wall, then for a doorway. It’s corporeal or mostly so, but it chills the air like a ghost. It’s not a demon. Salt harms it, but only locally. Parts of it can be killed while the rest lives, like a hydra or…or a colony, some freaky sea creature. It can either alter reality or create djinn-level, full-sensory illusions, and it kills light sources. It’s unholy enough to create a dead zone. It can fuck with the memories of an entire town. It’s bigger than he wants to contemplate.

It all adds up to jack shit.

To make matters worse he’s backtracked to where he’d been dragged into this…room, hallway, whatever it is, and found only bare wall where there should have been an opening. He pounds the wall in frustration and only ends up with a spike of pain for his troubles. Dean grits his teeth and slips a hand under his shirt to feel his right shoulder. It’s hot and swollen to the touch, and there’s a divot where a divot should not be.

A separated shoulder isn’t going to do him any good. He takes a moment to steel himself, and twists to lean his right side against the wall, carefully positioning his arm. Dean shoves hard against the wall, puts all of his weight against it, until his arm slides back into its socket with a wet, meaty _pop_. A grunt punches out of him, leaving him panting and aching. He’s had worse. If only this place weren’t damned and determined to remind him of that.

The sounds are ever-present. The whispers gnaw at his brain as he creeps along the wall. It’s the begging that’s the worst part. The angel blade is a steady weight in his hand, a comfort. It’s easier with a blade. Elegant. He can almost feel clawed, bony fingers sliding down his arm to take him by the wrist and guide his hand. He can see the flashes of sulphur flame now. The pleas for mercy won’t stop. Once they were sweet music to his ears, in a place as cold and dark and hopeless as this, and it’s harder to separate the two with every stumbling beat of his heart.

“Hello? Who’s here? Where are you?”

It’s not a scream, nor his mentor’s voice. It’s not — Dean shakes his head, heart hammering in his chest as he comes back to himself. For a long, horrible moment everything, his thoughts included, seem to catch up in slow motion. That voice isn’t Sam. Rutherford, it’s Steve Rutherford, and he’s close. Dean pat-pats at the damp, membranous walls yet faster ‘til he finds another doorway, and calls back, “Steve?”

“Officer Davies? I thought I heard you.” He’s close, maybe in the same room now. “Jesus Mary Joseph, it smells like someone emptied a port-a-potty into a slaughterhouse. What in God’s name is this place?”

“God’s got nothing to do with it now,” Dean deadpans. “What’re you doing here?”

He just about jumps out of his skin when a hand lands on and grips his sleeve. It’s by a narrow margin that he avoids making Steve Rutherford part with his own arm.

“I heard— I heard y’all were coming here to look for missing kids.” His voice is shaky. Can’t blame him. “And I thought, my Jenny used to get into all kinds of places she oughtn’t be, but I thought maybe, I thought maybe, maybe there was a chance….”

If there were light to see by there’d be tears tracking down the man’s cheeks, of that Dean is sure. If there was a fragility to his voice the day before it’s all fractured pieces now. Dean remains silent, standing steady under Steve’s hand, trying not to heed the crawling sensation in his gut.

“I haven’t seen her in so long but I thought, maybe there was a chance, maybe, if police were sniffing around maybe she’d turn up after all this time.”

“Steve,” Dean starts slowly, “how long has it been since you last saw Jenny?”

The man makes a noise that had tried and failed to be a word instead of a sob. “Must’ve…must’a been six years now. She was only ten. She was just a girl.”

A shiver wracks Dean from head to toe.

Steve clears his throat to let his voice deepen back out from the reediness it had taken on. “And then I got in here and shit just went sideways,” he continues. “Lights out, ungodly noises everywhere, I got all turned around, and I could swear there’s something in here. We haven’t had a bear in these parts in forever, but….”

“Oh I can assure you, it’s not a bear,” Dean says tautly.

Six years. It was weeks or maybe months yesterday. He turns the word progressive over in his head, along with retro-something that stays hovering on the tip of his tongue without Sam’s book-smarts to give it form. He rifles through aged newspaper blurbs in his head: decades worth of missing persons searches called off and never mentioned again, as if everyone had just forgotten anyone was missing in the first place. Never-heard-ofs littering a tiny country town, as if they’d never been there in the first place. He thinks briefly of standing in a living room in Colorado being asked what his issue is and feeling like he’d been torn apart by Hellhounds all over again.

A traitorous little thorn of a voice wonders if Steve and his wife will suffer less once they forget the child they’ve lost was ever there.

He leans against the wall to try to ride out his swimming head but the shift and twitch of flayed skin pressing against his back isn’t doing him any favours. “Listen, Steve, we’re gonna have to talk about Jenny later,” he says gently, “but right now we gotta get you outta here. I gotta find my brother — partner — and we gotta get the fuck outta Dodge.”

“No arguments there,” Steve agrees.

“Good. Now listen. No matter what you hear, no matter what you see, I need you to stay close, you got me? And if you get really cold all of a sudden you tell me.”

It sounds like he’s nodding. Who can tell, though. “I’ve had just about all I can take of this place, Officer; whatever you need me to do here I’ll do it.”

“Good,” Dean repeats. He feels up to Rutherford’s wrist and moves his hand over to Dean’s left arm, leaving his sword arm free. They set off together into the groaning dark, and Dean would pray for this time to go better if he thought anyone out there was listening at all.

—

It’s slow going, between not being able to see an inch in front of his face and the floor alternately feeling like wood on the verge of shattering and a mound of spilled innards. He calls out to Sam every few steps, and taunting whispers answer. Steve Rutherford keeps a death grip on his arm. Before long it’s hard to tell the waxing-and-waning sound of something half-drowned heaving for air from Steve’s near-panicked breath. Both are right behind him at all times.

“You read the Bible much?” he murmurs as they pick their way across what he hopes to God is large cobblestone instead of what it really feels like.

“Does a bear shit in the woods?” Steve grunts back.

They’re both equally rhetorical, Dean supposes. “I don’t guess John 11:10 means anything to you?”

“You saw that on the door too, huh. ‘But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, for there is no light in him.’ Kinda fitting ain’t it.”

Dean could kick something if he were any less certain it’d just end with him stumbleth-ing in the Godforsaken dark. “Oh that’s a fucking riot, ain’t it. Sam?”

“Dean?”

He almost misses it for all the chapel’s cursed noises — the gnawing and panting, the whimpers, the groans. Almost. He twists his arm to grip Steve’s by the elbow, ready to pick up the pace, but the other man stays stock-still.

“Got cold,” Steve whispers.

“Fuck,” Dean answers, and hollers for “SAM!” again loud enough to make his lungs burn. The cold creeps up on him too like someone opened a freezer door. He shoves Steve up against the wall, ignoring the civilian’s squawks about whatever dear-God-please-let-it-just-be-an-illusion thing he feels there instead of plaster and wood. He speaks swiftly, because fuck knows there can’t be much time: “Don’t read too much into this. I need you to stay put, stay behind me. Remember what I said before? No matter what you see.”

“What the Hell is going on here?!” Steve chokes.

“Hell,” Dean shrugs. He sets his feet, adjusts his grip on the sword, and—

It comes from the left. The abomination grabs at his leg with half a dozen mouths and countless tiny, bony protrusions that feel like broken fingers transplanted off the hands to which they’d belonged. Hot blood gushes under his jeans as the thing’s teeth — its blunt, too-long, too-human teeth — crush their way through his skin. The wordless cries that’ve dogged his heels for what feels like hours rise in a crescendo, higher, louder, until Dean can’t tell them from his own screams from the creature’s unholy metal roar. He takes a wild swing outward, down, catches some edge of it and shoves with all his might. He screams for Sam though part of him wants to warn him off with _Go, while it’s distracted get out even if it’s without me._

A venomous little part of him wonders if Sam would suffer less if he forgot that Dean was ever there. But it’s not part of him this time. It’s not his voice. It’s deeper, older, angrier.

Dean hears his father’s voice for the first time in, effectively, fifty years and, for one horrible moment, forgets that it can’t be real. It steals his breath. He’s drowning, shaking, and the creature whispers in John’s own voice,

_What good are you if you can’t take orders anyway?_

”Fuck you,” he snarls. “Fuck him and fuck you!”

Dean grits his teeth and bends his knees to drop closer to the beast. He can almost see it, a perfect empty space in the murk, like a black hole — defined by what isn’t there. He sinks his fist into the freezing, oozing gore of the creature and forces the angel blade into its reeking meat. It roars again, and it thrashes, but he’s a pit bull with a bone now and he hangs on for all he’s worth. It smashes him back up against the wall to try to scrape him off; and failing that, it wraps around him with finger-bones and chains and tries dragging him out into the dark again.

Voices rise behind him. Children, victims, strangers, Rutherford, Sam — _Sam_ — and for one horrible moment he thinks that’s another trick as well.

Light floods the room and he yelps again, blind in a new way, but not half as loud as the creature does.

—

Every once in a while Dean finds himself annoyed when his baby brother rides in late to save the day like the US showing up in Normandy. Tonight is not one of those times. His eyes burn but he’ll take the pain.

Sam charges in with a flashlight shining on their monster and knife held ready to strike. The creature must decide Dean isn’t worth fighting if it’s not on its own terms. It pulls away with such ferocious, startled speed he has to grab the sword with both hands to keep from losing it. There’s a downside to this, he finds out in a hurry: he finally gets a good look at what’s been stalking them through the labyrinthine church. He’s seen friendlier things in Hell. As it disappears through doorway he’s certain wasn’t there before, something about the shape strikes him, the long, segmented struts with all their eyes and screaming faces. Something about the way they curl together.

“A hand,” he slurs. His brain catches up to the fact his mouth’s going numb about the same time as he spits out a gob of the creature’s blood — or ectoplasm, but he’s less and less sure of that. “Ish a fucking hand. ‘Ow…how the fuck…’shworking?”

The first thing out of Sam’s mouth is, “Jesus Christ, Dean, your leg.” Brilliant fucking observation. Sam looks away, trying to dodge the question in favour of checking Dean’s injuries with a swift, practised hand.

“Not that bad,” Dean grunts, but he can’t help a whole-body wince. “I can walk, ish not that bad. Your light’s working.”

Sam won’t meet his gaze.

“WHAT THE FUCK, WHAT IN GOD’S NAME, WHAT THE FUCK—”

Steve Rutherford is up against the wall (it’s wood and plaster now, paint flaking off in gentle, ashlike curls instead of boiling gouts). Sheet-white and sweating, he has the look of a rabbit that just felt a hawk’s talons close on the air between its ears. Dean snaps his fingers in the man’s face. “Hey. Hey. Don’t get shocky on me now,” he says, trying to keep his own voice as steady as he can. The numbness is fading. “Remember whad I told you? Shay — sh, ss, say it.”

The man’s eyes fix on Dean, guided by the incandescent beam Sam scans around, but it’s a thousand-yard stare without a focal point.

“Steve! What’d I tell you?” He winces at himself for yelling. Tells himself it’s necessary. Feels like a drill sergeant. That doesn’t sit too well.

“N-no mat-matter what I see, no matter what I hear, stay close.” Each word is steadier than the last. “Y’all ain’t state troopers, are you.”

Sam laughs, quiet and rueful. “Figured that much out, huh.”

“How ‘bout we save the ‘monsters are real’ talk for when we’re outta here in one piece,” Dean says out the side of his mouth. “That is fucking definitely not any damn kind of demon I ever heard of, or any kind of spirit. I mean it’s gotta be some kind of undead, you saw what salt rounds did to it, but it can’t go through walls.”

They both ignore Steve’s incredulous “Undead?!” — they’ve already told him they’ll have that conversation later on.

Sam helps him stand, and tries to steady him with a hand on Dean’s shoulder but draws away at the next wince. “Not to mention the part where the demon-killing knife didn’t kill it. I mean. Killed part of it, but not the whole thing.”

“We haven’t been fighting the whole thing.”

That stops Sam short. “What?”

Dean’s eyes fix on the circle of illumination on the wall, since the flashlight’s being held steady now. The whispers are quiet now, little sing-song things the likes of which Dean imagines some children must learn at Sunday school. He holds up his free hand and wiggles his fingers. “Told you. It’s a hand. That means it’s got a body somewhere.”

His brother pulls up beside him, careful not to bump his sore shoulder. “So we find the body, we find a way to kill it. Is that….”

“Yeah,” Dean says, voice gone small. There are more words and numbers of various sized stenciled on the wall in the same inky, foul-smelling black substance. There’s almost more lettering than visible wall. Verse upon verse upon verse condemning sin after sin, promising torture and retribution and ruin, promising famine and plague. John 11:10 repeats over and over among the screed like mocking laughter. Largest of all is a line labeled Proverbs 20:20:

WHOSO CURSETH HIS FATHER OR HIS MOTHER, HIS LAMP SHALL BE PUT OUT IN OBSCURE DARKNESS.

The Winchester brothers both swear in perfect sync.

“By that logic,” Dean grouses over his shoulder as he draws closer, “I would’a thought it’d go after you first.”

Sam gives him a dirty look. “It _did_ go after me first, Dean.”

“Don’t point that fuckin’ thing in my face, jackass. How’d you get it working again? If this thing’s got some, Iunno, some fetish about rebellious kids that kills light sources you’re seriously the last person in the world it’d give a pass.” He turns back to the wall. Psalm 11:6. Genesis 19, Ezekiel 38:22 — it reminds him of the old letters he’d read from when the town was dying. It reminds him, in a nagging way, of Brian Greene. It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without knowing what the picture’s supposed to be. All he can do is fit the pieces together one at a time.

“I found a lighter in my pocket,” Sam admits, “after it dragged you off and made the door disappear. I had just enough time to find the next creepy verse on the wall before it went out.”

“And?” Dean prompts testily.

“And it was different, like it was scratched into the wall by hand like the doors instead of the ectoplasm-paint the thing’s been using to yell at us, or whatever that shit is.” Even though his face is in shadow Dean would know Sam’s bitchface voice anywhere. “Psalm 119:105. _Nun lucerna pedi meo verbum tuum et lux semitae meae._ ”

What the fuck, Sam. “Could you be maybe less of a nerd while we’re fighting for our goddamn lives here?” He gets flashlight to the face again for it.

“Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light unto my path.”

Oh. _Oh._

Steve cuts in, “You’re telling me you prayed your flashlight back on?” as if it’s the least believable thing that’s happened in the last few hours.

That’s not what Dean’s problem with this is, though. “You prayed?” he asks far more gently. “I thought you gave up on that after what Joshua told us in the Garden.”

Sam shuffles uncomfortably like an embarrassed child. “You pray to Cas all the time,” he bites back.

Dean flinches and looks back at the wall. “That’s different. He hasn’t been answering lately anyway.”

“Yeah well,” Sam murmurs, “maybe God’s not listening anymore, but whether or not they get answered I know for a fact someone always hears my prayers. I could say the same for you. You still got your flashlight?”

Perfect timing on that topic change. Dean doesn’t want to contemplate too deeply what his brother meant by that. He pats himself down, hissing at the sting of his injuries, until he locates it — and the hot, tender spot that’s no doubt going to be a flashlight-shaped bruise tomorrow, if he lives to see tomorrow. “Yeah, I still got it.”

“Give it to Steve.”

Dean makes a face but does so, and busies himself cleaning sludge off the angel sword.

“Look, Steve, I know this is a lot to take in,” Sam says evenly, “but that thing’s gonna be back soon so we don’t have a lotta time here. Do you know Psalm 23?”

Rutherford nods. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” he begins.

Sam follows along in Latin, because apparently he can’t help but be a giant nerd under fire. All the same, Dean’s ears prick at the line “ _non timebo mala quoniam tu mecum_.” It’s not as though he doesn’t know the words too. He startles a moment later when the light flickers back to life — dim at first, but gaining strength.

“God A’mighty,” Steve whispers, and breaks out into nerveless laughter. “Well that’s a step in the right direction. Where to now?”

Right now Dean wants nothing more than to escape this place and scrub himself raw until he smells human again. He wants to curl up in a ball and scream until he can’t feel Alastair’s breath on his neck anymore. What he wants isn’t important. This thing has been stealing lives for decades. He can’t just walk away from that. He draws himself up to his full height and twirls Hester’s blade in his hand. “Our job’s not done here. Whatever you’ve seen so far, it’s only gonna get worse. You don’t have to come with us but him and me—” he indicates Sam with the sword’s point “—we’ve got a monster to kill.”

Steve sucks in a deliberate breath through his nose. “You got any other weapons?”

Dean gives him a dubious look, but produces the crowbar that damn near cracked one of his ribs while the creature was tossing him around, and hands it over. Sam, however, frowns at this. “Steve this is gonna be dangerous. We don’t even know if we can kill it. You should probably wait for us here—”

“Officer Avory,” Steve cuts him off, “or Sam, or whatever your name really is…is that thing the reason my Jenny’s missing?”

The Winchesters answer with solemn nods.

Steve’s face goes hard, shoulders set with determination. “Then I don’t give a good goddamn if she cursed my name or whatnot. That’s my baby girl. That’s my daughter. I don’t care if the Devil himself has her, I’m going after the son of a bitch. That’s what a father does.”

Dean can feel Sam’s eyes on him but he says nothing. Now’s not the time. Finally Sam sighs and relents: “Whatever you do don’t drop that flashlight, and when shit hits the fan don’t get in our way.”

They set off in search of a door. If they can’t find one, by God they’ll make one.

—

There’s little rhyme or reason to the appearance and frequency of the doors in this place, save that they only come into being in the dark. Sam takes point this time with Dean in the middle and Steve taking up the rear. Being the only one without a working light keeps him on edge as much as the stench clinging to him. There’s only ever one way to go, and the noises are less intense now that they have means of keeping the darkness at bay again.

“I made my peace with him, you know,” Sam murmurs quietly enough that Dean isn’t sure he really heard it.

“Who?” He thinks he knows already.

“Dad,” Sam confirms. “A few years ago. When Cas sent us back— when Anna was trying to kill Mom and Dad. We talked. It was a weight off, you know? I mean I’m still pretty fucked up, but I’m not as angry at him anymore.” A coughing fit cuts him off there. Dean keeps a hand on his back to steady him. He smells blood when Sam spits on the floor, and that’s a thornier spike of fear than the creature they’re hunting by far.

“Maybe now’s not the best time for this,” Dean mutters, but Sam shakes his head.

“It’s important _here_. Why didn’t the creature take Brian Greene?”

A puzzle piece snaps into place, and another beside it. “He said he’s made peace with his old man. That preacher from the Thirties, Henry Louis — that letter from his brother talked about how he wouldn’t leave the church? It also said he hadn’t forgiven his son for skipping town. Sam I was right, it’s gotta be him. Maybe not a poltergeist but—”

“He’s still trying to keep people from leaving,” Sam finishes, straightening up with the revelation. Dean nods uselessly.

A hand claps to Dean’s right shoulder and he grunts with the effort of not allowing his knees to buckle. At this rate he’s gonna have to call in a favour with a vet for some prednisone or fentanyl. Not that he’ll let on how sore he is, but he can’t risk letting it interfere with his job. Nothing can get in his way right now — including wistful rumination about doping up after a hunt. He grits his teeth and focuses on Rutherford’s voice.

“Found a door. We walked right past it.”

“Actually,” Sam starts, but Dean signals at him to drop it.

They exit the hall for the umpteenth time and step into the umpteenth version of the same tiny room. Dean’s breath catches, though, when he sees the opposite wall. It’s more badly decayed than anything he’s seen since they came in. It wears the state of ruin he’d expect of the chapel’s real insides: all cracked, bleached boards with lonesome flecks of paint clinging stubbornly against the ravages of time. The room is dried out and off-kilter, with its roof sagging overhead and perfect black showing between the slats. The three of them stare down a set of double doors that form a near-perfect mirror of the shattered mess they’d passed through hours ago. They’re the red-brown of dried blood under their flashlights, but the beams can’t penetrate the darkness on the other side.

Dean’s heart pounds in his throat. Fear drains away. This is it.

“On three,” he tells his brother, and Sam stands beside him. They ready themselves to kick in the doors.

Something else beats them to it.

The temperature drops like a stone, and the darkness beyond the broken planks oozes out — frothing and reeking in a too-familiar way — not in trickles, but in great sloshing gouts. Through the muck the creature’s extremities push through. Those unholy pseudopods lined with jabbering mouths and decomposing human features pull the doors open like the hands Dean had claimed them to be. The whispers and noises rise again in a tidal wave assaulting his ears and his mind as the doors creak apart. Children. Souls whose screams he’d relished in the Pit. Strangers. His father. Yet he stands fast, and their lights remain strong. The voices cry out as one, a congregation of terror and pain:

“ _See the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be His peoples, and God Himself will be with them. Enter and be saved._ ”

Behind them, Steve breaks out into the Lord’s Prayer, and it sounds as though it’s the only thing keeping him from fleeing the spot. He and Sam shine their flashlights into the blackness, and the chapel towers above them in a crumbling parody of glory. Its pews are strewn about, broken, eaten away in places as if by acid. The floor is in just as sad a shape, riddled with fissures bubbling with ichor like hot springs or a ruptured septic pipe. The ceiling is half-collapsed, held up by chains that slither like eels and glint red and black where the light hits them. Beneath the worst of the collapse stands the altar, and the thing they’ve been hunting all this time.

Dean can’t find it in himself to gloat about being right. The creature is a sagging pillar of ooze and quivering flesh as dark as any demon’s eyes that pulsates like a heartbeat. The same chains that hold the chapel intact wind around and through it, anchoring it to a fissure in the ground and pinioning its gore to the ceiling, like a martyr flayed and stretched out on a rack. The creature’s limbs splay as if in supplication; their skulls jabber half-words promising salvation and begging to be ended as Dean enters. He’s almost unaware of his own feet moving, but it calls to something in him that yearns to answer with blood and flame, with violence that welcomes oblivion with open arms.

“ENTER AND BE SAVED,” chokes out a thin, high, tremulous voice above the others. The “arms” fold in closer to the creature’s body, joining back to its mass with a nauseating noise like a child aspirating water. “THE WORLD OUTSIDE IS WICKED AND STAINED BY SIN BUT YOU, MY SONS, WHO FORSAKE THE NAMES AND HOMES OF THY FATHERS MAY YET BE REDEEMED! BE ONE WITH THE CONGREGATION OF THE LORD! “

The chorus of voices responds to the call: “ _Be one with the congregation of the Lord._ ”

“JOIN IN THE COVENANT OF THE LAST DAYS FOR THERE IS NO DARKNESS IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD.”

“ _We know the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings and become like Him in death._ ”

“Henry Louis?” That voice— Dean blinks, halts, and casts around to find his little brother close behind him. “Holy shit,” Sam adds in a whisper. “Henry Louis?”

“HE IS WITH US NOW. THE BLESSED ONE WAITS FOR THE COMING OF THE LORD.”

The creature shudders, thrashes, and splits itself down the middle to reveal a grey-boned, decomposing goat’s corpse. What remains of its musculature spreads out into the rest of the monstrosity in sheets and gobs. Its ribs are cracked open like cage doors, and in its middle, held fast by chain, is a human skull with a heart beating steadily between its teeth, a blotch of lurid red. The creature’s foul, shadow-slick body convulses in time.

“BEHOLD! HE HAS BROUGHT US TOGETHER THAT WE MAY BE READY FOR SALVATION AT THE DAY OF JUDGMENT,” the thing bleats, and Dean vomits sour bile between the pews.

“A grim,” Sam gasps, “it’s a church grim, oh my God. They’re supposed to be guardians, not…this.” He follows the lines of chain and ichor spreading out through the building like veins. “Jesus…he must’ve tried to make a grim to protect the grounds and keep people from leaving town.”

“Well he fucked up something bad,” Dean spits. “Exorcism?”

The creature — church grim — starts exuding its limbs again, and the Winchesters scramble backwards. Sam shakes his head. “No, it’s, it’s undead but it’s an amalgam, a construct. The heart, we’ve gotta destroy the heart.”

“STEVEN MARCUS RUTHERFORD, SON OF MARCUS BOYD RUTHERFORD,” the grim shrieks, “YOUR KIN HAS CURSED YOUR NAME BUT SHALL BE ABSOLVED OF THE UNCLEAN WORLD BEYOND THESE SACRED WALLS! COME, JOIN HER IN SALVATION. REPENT AND BE AS ONE WITH THE BODY OF CHRIST AT THE END OF DAYS!”

The last jigsaw piece clicks into place. The epiphany of where all those skulls and all that rotting flesh has come from brings Dean close to throwing up again, but there’s nothing left in his stomach.

“Jenny?!”

There’s a clatter behind them as their second light source swings wildly and veers off to illuminate the ground. Dean turns just in time to brace himself for Steve’s charge. Even with Sam’s help Dean can barely hold him back. He thrashes like a wild beast and bellows back at the grim, “ _Give me back my daughter you unholy son of a bitch!_ ”

Sam yelps as the man’s heel connects with his knee. Steve fights his way free and charges the grim, heedless of the hunters’ frantic yells to stop. He throws himself at the creature and bashes at it with all his might. The grim sizzles at the crowbar’s touch, and wet thuds punctuate a chorus of rending-metal howls and gibbering condemnations. Dean’s heart stops when the grim’s chains lash out to loop around the civilian and start drawing him into its putrid mass.

“Dean!”

“Sam, get him,” he barks. He’s already started the charge. The light swings away from his mark as Sam goes after Steve, but he doesn’t need it; he can find the heart in darkness just the same. Its roaring gives it away in the act of taking a swipe at Dean and he ducks, rolls, snatches at rib bone and chain, and starts hacking with the angel blade.

“AND AT THAT TIME SHALL MICHAEL STAND UP, THE GREAT PRINCE WHICH STANDETH FOR THE CHILDREN OF THY PEOPLE,” the grim wails at him; “AND THERE SHALL BE A TIME OF TROUBLE, SUCH AS NEVER WAS SINCE THERE WAS A NATION EVEN TO THAT SAME TIME: AND AT THAT TIME THY PEOPLE SHALL BE DELIVERED, EVERY ONE THAT SHALL BE FOUND WRITTEN IN THE BOOK.”

The world tilts around him. His arm is aflame from shoulder to fingertips. The goat skull snaps at his face, gashing open his forehead with his teeth, and his blood is a hot rain down his face. And still he hacks. Hester’s blade breaks bone and chain, and finally Henry Louis’ skull comes free in his hands. The heart beats and beats. He rips it free, throws the preacher’s bones as far away from him as he can, and drops the heart onto a pew. Dean can hear his brother calling for him, can hear Steve’s strangled cries, and the walls around them shake as if in the middle of a storm, but all his focus is on one act: driving the angel blade straight through the church grim’s heart until it’s skewered to the wood.

All the grim’s voices cry out at once, and he could swear they sound grateful beneath the pain. The grim itself twists and flounders, pulling its chains loose of the ceiling. The roof comes down with it, and the last thought to cross Dean’s mind is that he can finally see the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UP NEXT: Fade to Black concludes on 25 September 2015.


	6. Lamentations 3:2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a storm in his heart, the same storm that’s raged endlessly for the past thirty years. Its shadow made him Alastair’s favourite in the Pit. Its fury made him the perfect predator among monsters in Purgatory. Pretending it hasn’t ravaged his insides takes everything he has, every moment of every day. There’s no taming it. There’s no quelling it. And it wasn’t going to go away just to get a flashlight working on a hunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack Entries  
> [13\. The Great Collapse](https://youtu.be/wXFK82TGh7c)  
> [14\. Daybreak (Closing Overture)](https://youtu.be/GMfvYxK9Zoo)  
> [[Listen to the full soundtrack on 8tracks](http://8tracks.com/gunshy-fiction/fade-to-black-1)]

_He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light._

 

_No Hell below us, above us only sky—_

“Dean, answer me, c’mon.”

He wakes with blood and music in his mouth. Two points of pressure are digging into his armpits. His heels scrape across uneven ground but he isn’t moving his legs. An unholy stench and a headache to match make Dean regret having woken up at all.

The sky above him is still dark but muddied by the coming dawn. Cool air hastens Dean’s return to the waking world, and he scrabbles to get his feet under him. Before him, the Old Town chapel lies in ruin, half its roof collapsed and much of one wall with it. Behind him is a warm, solid weight: Sam’s dragged him out of the rubble. They’re on the north slope of the rise, halfway between the chapel and the Impala. Steve Rutherford lies on his back nearby. It’s too dark yet to tell whether or not he’s still breathing.

“You scared the shit out of me back there,” Sam scolds into the back of Dean’s head, steadying him as he stands. Oh, standing’s unpleasant. Takes effort to keep that off his face.

“That’s my line, brat,” he huffs back. There’s no heat in it. He runs a hand through his hair and winces when he finds the blood-wet, swollen spot where a piece of the ceiling must have taken him out. That’s gonna bruise bad and that’s best-case scenario. He takes stock: his vision’s okay, he doesn’t feel particularly dizzy, and he does remember the events of the last hour (more’s the pity; it’s gonna take a lot of grain alcohol to _stop_ ). All told on the upside Dean figures he probably doesn’t have a concussion this time. Sam runs checks on him to the same effect, and reaches the same conclusion.

“See?” Dean cracks an smile made easy by adrenaline and pain. “Been through worse.”

His left leg is a mess, though. It’s awkward at best to keep his weight off it. His pant leg sticks to his skin in places, and there’s a hot, lazy trickle of blood where it doesn’t.

“What about Steve? Did he….”

“Make it out? Yeah. Not doing too hot though,” the man answers. His voice is strained but steady.

Dean lets go of the breath he’d been holding. “Man you sound like shit.”

“Feel like it too,” Steve agrees. “That thing fucked me up but good. Officer Avory — Sam — if you’re good to drive the volunteer EMTs oughta be at the ready at the triage room by the time we get to the firehouse. And tomorrow or so they can come put out a big goddamn fire after it burns this evil place to the ground.”

“His phone’s working now that we’re outside,” Sam explains to fill Dean in, “so he called 9-1-1 while I was digging your tubby ass outta the collapse.”

Dean scowls and shoves Sam away. He’d punch the little (big) shit but the jibe smarts less than his shoulder, so he might as well not put that part of him through any more strife tonight.

“Fuck yourself, Sam.” But he hands off his keys anyway, and after they both lay down tarps on the Impala’s seats and help Steve into the back, he heads straight for the passenger side. By the cabin light Dean gets a good look at the scope of Steve’s injuries. EMTs aren’t gonna cut it for that, but he keeps his mouth shut. Hopefully there’s a good burn ward in Little Rock.

“So this might be kinda late to be asking this but what the fuck is a church grim anyway?”

“All but unheard of in America for one,” Sam says dryly before revving the engine. “They’re related to black dogs. When Christianity was just catching on in Europe, sometimes people would sacrifice an animal and bury it under the altar to make a grim to, uh, to watch the place at night. It’s sympathetic magic so intent’s a big thing. You can _say_ you’re making the thing to protect your congregation against the Apocalypse, but if what’s really on your mind is making sure no one leaves….” They saw how that worked out.

“So Pastor Louis gets his hands in the necromancy pie, and his own hangups fuck up the ritual and, what, corrupt the thing?” Dean glances out the window, then back to his little brother, who nods. “Fucking gross, man, why do people gotta fuck around with necromancy, like, _ever_.”

Sam shrugs. “Desperate, crazy people do desperate, crazy things. I mean didn’t we practically write the book on that?”

He’s got a point there. Right down to the unspoken part about raising the dead.

They’re just pulling past the broken fence that marks the boundaries of Old Town when Dean notices Steve staring at him in the rear view mirror. “You hangin’ in back there?”

“I got a friend who moved to Milwaukee,” he remarks instead of answering, and Dean’s stomach drops. “Must’a been about ten years ago his bank got rolled. Couple people died. He said the fellas what done it turned up dead a couple months later. Then just a few years ago he calls be up and says, ‘Steve, hey Steve, you seen what’s goin’ down on channel 30? It’s the sonsabitches that knocked over my bank!’ I remember ’cause the picture was out on my TV so I couldn’t see what was going on, but I remember the names of the guys. Sam and Dean.”

“Um,” Sam adds uselessly.

Dean reconsiders the concussion thing ’cause his head’s sure spinning now. Steve keeps going: “And I remember hearing their voices on the TV too. But those two were a Hell of a lot different men than what I seen tonight.”

The brothers share a look. Sam’s expression is a silent question looking to Dean for instructions: if they should really head to the firehouse or…somewhere else.

Dean swallows thickly and begins, “I think it’s about time for that monsters-are-real talk.”

—

Dean insists on driving when they head out the next morning despite the stitches in his leg. He’s not about to tell Sam as much but it’s kinda nice to have them done by a licensed professional who uses something other than Everclear as an antiseptic. A shower, some solid rest, and some heavy-duty painkillers have done him a world of good.

Never mind waking up in a cold sweat with the sounds of twisting metal and voices begging for mercy trailing after him. He understands full well why Brian Greene buys light bulbs in bulk.

He’s also not about to tell Sam that he prayed to Cas while his brother was in the shower this morning. It hadn’t even been for healing, though God knows he’d welcome that fix-it touch. Just checking in. Just hoping for— it doesn’t matter what he was hoping for. There was no answer anyway. It’s starting to remind him too much of Purgatory, and it’s threading a slithery line of dread through his insides day-by-day.

“I almost wish we could’ve gotten out of that without breaking the news to him,” Sam says about five miles up the eastbound highway. “The look on his face. He really still didn’t remember the last six years of his daughter’s life. And he’s gonna have to be the one to break the news to Brian too. It’s a shitty situation, you know? Knowing you have memories missing and you might never get them back.”

Dean glances over. That’s experience talking. The difference here is even with the grim destroyed and — he’s assuming, he’s _hoping_ — the assimilated souls freed, the memories it had consumed are gone for good. They’re not hiding behind some wall in the townsfolk’s minds. He ventures, “I guess if it was me I’d prefer not to know about the shit I don’t know about.”

“Even then it’s not that simple.”

But what other choice did they have? Steve and the EMTs had all had questions, and there was only so much dodging they could do.

Miles later Sam murmurs with the air of a confession: “I um. I think we were all hearing things in there, you know.” (Dean nods.) “I heard— I thought I heard Dad too.”

If Dean were any less excellent a driver he’d surely swerve into a ditch from how fast he whips around to look at his brother. He says nothing.

“Not often,” Sam goes on, “just here and there. It was just the church grim fucking with us, but. When I got my flashlight working again, it stopped.”

Dean presses his mouth shut and his jaw tight. He was a good son. Or tried to be. But it was never good enough for John, and it hadn’t stopped the grim from using his failures against him either.

If Pastor Henry Louis weren’t dead Dean would want to shoot him.

“Not gonna lie, it wasn’t easy. I never thought it’d forgive him for — everything. But it, it really is good to move on, you know?"

There’s a storm in his heart, the same storm that’s raged endlessly for the past thirty years. Its shadow made him Alastair’s favourite in the Pit. Its fury made him the perfect predator among monsters in Purgatory. Pretending it hasn’t ravaged his insides takes everything he has, every moment of every day. There’s no taming it. There’s no quelling it. And it wasn’t going to go away just to get a flashlight working on a hunt.

Dean’s knuckles go white on the steering wheel. When he finally speaks it comes out as a snarl, quiet and acidic.

“Well good the fuck for you, Sam. I’m glad you’re moving on. You’re good at that. You’ve always been real fucking good at moving on.”

Sam rustles beside him — the sounds of shifting around uncomfortably. Good. “Dean—”

“But news flash, I can’t, okay? Not that easy anyway. And believe me Sam, I would _love_ to just…just let it all go, and stop worrying, and be out from under his fucking shadow for good, but it’s just — it’s not that easy. I don’t get to forget years at a time. I’m sure as fuck not gonna fabricate forgiveness and pretend everything’s kosher between me and Dad’s memory for the sake of appeasing some stupid, insecure dead preacher’s curse.”

Sam’s stunned silence lasts for hours to come. Dean does the only thing he can in the situation. The same thing he’s been doing most of his life.

He drives.

 

**END.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Love it? Hate it? Still confused? Let me know what you think in the comments.
> 
>  **SPECIAL THANKS:** Chels, AJ, Mittens, and the Meta Saloon, without whom this fic would not have been half as coherent, had I ever managed to finish it at all.


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